Lux
by tapioca two-step
Summary: Unfortunate circumstances left a small group of humans alive on the dread planet Na Pali. They're about to pay the price of being survivors.
1. Water

Not expecting many reviews for this, but I thought that it deserves to be put up, considering that the Unreal fandom is now dominated by fanboys who have no clue when or where the series began. The first game is really the only one with a soul.

My Prisoner 849 will be a girl. 849 is canonically female. I'm sorry if this offends anyone.

This is a fanfiction, and I take artistic licence with it. Yes, I know 849 is not bald, does not start out with the Enforcer, and that actually the Enforcer is called the Automag in Unreal but I like the word 'Enforcer' better.

Read and review, if you'd like. Have a wonderful day. --MNM

Chapter One: Water

_We only live, only suspire_

_Consumed by either fire or fire._

_--T.S. Eliot _

It was a waterfall.

The sky was mottled steel, with flecks of gold surrounding the hazy yellow of what must have been a sun—but it was dwarfed in comparison to the looming butter-colored crescent of a moon, so that the bright star faded into the background.

The valley was secluded, walled off from the rest of the landscape by a vertical rock face several hundred feet high, and it was from thence that the waterfall flowed; an underground river, a vein of water, had eaten its way through the brown stone and now fell in a silvery spray down towards the river below. A secondary stream of water leaked through the rock and was barely visible if not for the glimmer of the sunlight on the droplets. The water must have been very high, at one point, because the river had eroded the rock until it neatly separated the huge rock from the lower landscape below by a deep canyon. The river twisted in a soft C-curve, catching the waterfall and carrying it around the bend until the water seemed to flow directly into the earthen walls of the valley.

She sat, cradling a bloodied upper arm with her opposite hand, at the edge of the canyon wall, her back to the waterfalls and the five-hundred foot drop that ended in an abrupt jut of land directly below her. Her body shook involuntarily; her face and lips were white, but flecked with blood. A gleam of metal glinted next to her bloodied hand—an Enforcer, with red fingerprints on the trigger.

She was staring at a rabbit—or what looked to be a rabbit, but certainly couldn't be. It had a rabbit's head and ears—the latter of which was quirked towards her, at the moment, as its jaws worked around a bit of grass—but its forepaws were absent. Instead, its body was almost completely dwarfed by the massive muscles of its back legs—the only appendages it had. No tail. Just a head and legs on a stumpy oval shaped body.

Her breath shuddered in and out of her lungs as she gazed at the animal from underneath blood-swollen lids. It paused, reared up on its legs, and whinnied at her. Two notes, one higher than the other; its call echoed on the canyon walls.

It was the only living thing out there with her. The only living thing besides her and the hulking massive beast of a ship that lay smoldering in its own crater somewhere in the midst of the cloud of smoke off to her right. She could hardly call it living, but it had been _living, _once, humming, with life inside of it. Not its own, of course. Life belonging to others.

Many others.

It had come down hard, like a fallen bird, and had clipped the rock wall on the opposite side of the canyon. With its belly ripped open, the ship pitched forwards, cleared the gaping canyon river, and buried itself in the soft ground of a high plateau, meeting a quick halt as it rammed into the narrow canyon's opposite wall.

The tattoo on the back of her bald head branded her as Prisoner 849 of the Prison Vessel 254, NC114-85EKLS _Vortex Rikers, _and as she sat there, it seemed an unfair marking. The _Rikers _was gone—crashed, burning like a piece of scrapped wood—and it hardly mattered if she was a convict or not, and what number she was, or not. Everyone—or mostly everyone—was dead.

And she had heard such—terrible screams—

The rabbit loped towards her, putting all of its weight on one wide back paw at a time. 849 bleakly thought of snapping its leg and watching it flounder. After all, that was the position she was in now. She couldn't get anywhere, couldn't do anything. Floundering. Drowning.

There, there it was again. A cry of agony, a cry of terror, from inside the _Rikers. _It rent against her ears and struck her heart with cold horror, making her pupils shrink to pinpoints of black in her dull eyes. She hadn't had water in nearly a week; otherwise she would have pissed herself.

She had found it strange that, a few hours after she woke up after the crash, she was still hearing people screaming. She had originally thought that the criminally insane quarters hadn't been fully damaged, and, perhaps, there were still inmates strapped to their beds in the cramped cells, but as she worked her way through the crumpled rooms of the ship, she found it wasn't the case. These sounds weren't the normal rants of insane people. These were the sounds of people being preyed upon, people being tortured, people meeting horrendous ends—and she knew exactly what that sounded like.

And then, that creature—!

It was completely by chance that she had come upon a group of personnel in the hallways of the _Rikers. _The only trouble was, her way was blocked by a partially closed door, which had been jolted loose from its magnetic hinges and lay ajar in its frame. She was about to squeeze herself through the wedge-shaped opening it left when terrified shrieking made her freeze in her tracks and crouch, shivering, as she listened to the savage snarls and feeble gunshots in the room beyond. When the terrible sounds of rending flesh and splashing blood had ceased, 849 worked up the courage to peek under the door to see if the way was clear.

The room housed a control node for many of the door locks in the prison cells in the sector. It was small, and there were boxes of unused supplies in the corner. The computer screen and motherboard were smashed to bits—a mangled body lay across the equipment.

—And the remains of some five or so humans lay scattered on the ground like refuse. She could plainly make out the delineation of a ribcage and spinal column not three feet away from the door she was crouched behind. A severed head had been flung against the wall and lay crushed on top of one of the supply boxes. Torsos, arms, legs, and entrails were strewn around the room, painting it slick with crimson.

In the middle of it all, standing like a statue save for its twitching tail, what looked to be a flat-faced lizard _creature_ surveyed his work, blood dripping audibly from two jagged blades protruding from the skin of its wrist.

It had taken every ounce of her will not to scream. The world grew dark, and when she woke up, her face was pressed into the floor, and the creature was gone. She had made her way out of the ship after that, jumping at every sound, trying not to look at the bodies strewn on the ground, slumped up against the walls, hanging from the steel crossbeams in the pilot's bay—

And then she had made it out of the ship via an emergency lock in the floor, and the place that had been her cage for months—years!—gave way to a waterfall. And a rabbit…thing.

For such a long time, she had dreamed of freedom. It mattered not that she didn't deserve it. She had longed to feel the wind on her face, on her bare wrists, in her hair, which, before it had been shorn off, had been glossy, beautiful. She wanted to walk somewhere, perhaps where there was grass, without being bonded by magnetic cuffs, or being escorted by a team of NEG Marines training laser sights on the back of her head. She wanted to live again, to set foot on solid ground.

But not like this. This—this wasn't _fair. _

She was stranded. She was trapped. It didn't matter that the crash of the _Rikers _had released her from its creaking hull. Even as she sat on the dry ground, listening to the pounding of water on water behind her, she was imprisoned again. Her only mode of escape was in a burning heap, taking with it all the food and supplies that she had become accustomed to for the past six years of her life.

She was trapped.

For a fleeting moment, the Enforcer's bite to her head seemed a gentle thing. But, like all moments, it passed. 849 had had plenty of opportunities to take her own life, and she was too tired of the sight of blood to think of her own staining the ground. Besides, she noted as an afterthought. It might spoil the grass for the rabbit.

She looked at the sky, which was darker now, with puffy black clouds building behind the plateaus above her, holding the promise of rain—or whatever fell from the sky on this hunk of rock. A couple of winged creatures soared in and out of the cloud of smoke rising from the _Rikers_. Aside from them and the rabbit, she was the only thing that seemed remotely alive in the whole canyon.

And considering that she was sitting in a pool of her own blood that had welled up from the huge gash in her thigh, had had no food for a week and no water for days, 849 knew that being remotely alive wasn't good enough for survival. She had to move, to go somewhere, to find something—or someone—that could help her regain her strength. She had picked up a first-aid kit in the pilot's bay, but it only held a ball of gauze, which had been soaked through already; the crimson stain was turning brown against her leg.

She looked to her left. Beyond the curve in the canyon wall were several large boulders and a tree that looked suspiciously like a palm. Beyond these were familiar structures—large, rust-colored containers with the UMS logo branded on the side—strewn on the ground. Supply boxes from the _Rikers. _From the looks of them, it was heavy equipment—the UMS ship often ferried military equipment from Earth to the far prison moons along with the inmates; perhaps tank engines, or generators, more likely. Either way, they were useless.

She squinted through the caked blood on her eyelids. There was a flash of yellow from beyond the cargo boxes. A bush, perhaps—but bushes weren't that tall. Or that smooth. Another box?

No. A roof. The roof of a hut.

The rabbit whinnied again. 849 glanced at it apprehensively. It had wandered away from her and now was busying itself with a plant growing around the bottom of the palm tree. It was drooping with heavy-looking fruit. She made a mental note to check it out when she could walk.

It was a roof. Built by the prisoners? They were a resourceful bunch, yes—at the outset of this particular trip, a 400-level convict (Kragon? Cargon? His name had gotten around after his particularly gruesome execution) had fashioned a magnet to disrupt the computerized locks on his cell. He had hidden in the ventilation system and had stalled the flight of the _Rikers _for two weeks. Perhaps some of them had survived and opted to remain close to the ship to pick up stragglers. Most of the prisoners believed in strength in numbers, seeing as it had always been them versus the cell block guards. But where did they get the materials?

Maybe there were indigenous creatures on the surface, and they built the hut…? Surely it couldn't be the lizard-man; she highly doubted that a creature of such stance and type would live in a squalid canyon. There wasn't anything to feed on here, from the look of things. Except the rabbit, of course, but she only counted one.

It started to rain.

At first she didn't notice. The sound of the waterfall had dulled her ears to the soft sounds of splashing on the dry ground, and her mild state of shock had numbed her senses so the light, cold pricks of water on her face and neck were barely felt. It was only when the rabbit shook itself and dashed for cover that she noticed she was being thoroughly soaked. She remained sitting for a minute more, watching the rain skim off of the _Rikers_' hull, and then put both hands on the now-muddy ground and pushed herself into a standing position, gripping the Enforcer as she straightened her back. Blood ran into her eyes; she couldn't see.

She counted the steps it took her to get under the shadow of the main rear thruster of the _Rikers. _It was an ugly ship, built in an uninspired, boxy shape with a troublesome generator powering a thruster that belched silicon-age pollution wherever it flew. Looking at its dented and destroyed hull, it seemed an even more pitiful craft than when it was at its prime—if it ever was _in _a condition that could be considered prime.

The dirt that had been churned up in the wake of the crash was warm and dry, and 849 slumped to the ground once more, holding her knees to her chest and listening to the fat drops of rain on the hull of the ship. She could still hear the prison break alarms.

It seemed like a kind of dream. She had been alive before the crash; existing was probably the proper term. "Life" on a prison ship meant fighting with cellmates, poisoned food served by bitter guards, rampant sickness in the quarters, and the threat of the electric chair if there was any hint of misbehavior from the inmates. Years inside the same ship, in the same cell, facing the same person in the adjacent unit, listening to the same voices—

Sameness. She was so used to sameness that she couldn't absorb the monumental changes that had taken place. For a ship to plummet out of hyperspace, pulled as if by an invisible hand, and crash-land in the time span of less than an hour—for herself to wake up and find her sameness was disrupted by blood and twisted metal and the smell of burning flesh—to wake up a solitary soul in a ghost ship, with no future but a confusion of pain and loss and, eventually, death…!

849 sat, looking out at the waterfalls across the canyon, and spent the night alone.


	2. Dulce et Decorum Est

A.N.: So I might squick the reader who decides to read this. There is rape in this chapter, although it's not too graphic, but it's necro-rape and it's a little gross. So, just scroll down to the next section when Shas shows up. Then again, I'm not expecting people to read this, so why am I worried? Anyway, rating bumped up to **R **for this bit.

Hehehe…ten hits. I'm hitting it big. But it's like they say. Write for yourself and not for others.

Title of this chapter belongs on Wilfred Owen's powerful poem and not on this steamy pile of fanfic.

Chapter Two: Dulce et Decorum Est

She awoke with a start and her first thought was: _I'm not dead yet. _

_Fuck. _

This time he had given her the small mercy of zipping up her tattered flight suit for her after he was done using her body, seeing as one of her arms ended in a bloody stump and her other hand was so badly mutilated that she only had the use of her thumb and her ring finger. The insides of her trembling thighs were stuck together by an all-too familiar substance, and as she sat up from her sprawled position on the ground, she winced from the twinge of pain that came from between her legs. The reaction was more an involuntary function than an expression of real pain. She had ceased to feel much at all since she had been brought to the Dark Arena.

She leaned up against the blood-stained wall—it was her blood, after all—and stared with dull blue eyes at the gate blocking the doorway. The lock was deceivingly simple to plain sight. Every day, for two weeks, she had tried to pick the lock and make a foolish escape, but even after all that time she made no headway. And then Shas had caught her at the attempt and had her hand severed from her body. He wasn't content with just cutting it off; instead, he flayed the skin from the limb first, and then snipped the tendons and muscles away, one by one. When she had passed out from the pain he waited until she woke up before he resumed his grisly work.

Once upon a time she would have cried and asked 'why'. Now she just took everything as it came. If you complained you got it worse—although that hardly applied to the brutal rape she was a victim of. It didn't matter if she wailed herself into unconsciousness or kept silent as the grave; she still felt close to death by the time Shas was done with her.

She was his special pet, unfortunately, and being such, she was required to perform certain favors for her Skaarj master several times a week. In return for her body, the Skaarj allowed her minimal food, less water, and the grace of hearing the other humans be gutted and tortured and crucified and—good God—become entertainment in the Colosseum, pitted in a ridiculously one-sided battle against a four story monstrosity known as a Titan.

And it didn't matter that her hair was falling out and her skin was smeared with filth and sweat and blood and semen; it didn't matter than her hands were mutilated and she was missing teeth and both of her eyes were nearly swollen shut, and it certainly didn't matter that she was a human. Shas took her and eagerly, abusing her to the brink of death and then coming back the next day with the same ideas in mind. She knew that he wanted to see her break. Perhaps it was a blessing that he didn't realize that she already had.

_The first time it had happened she had been surprised, almost taken aback. Her group of six other officers from the ISV-Kran had been captured by several Skaarj scouts as they emerged from the_ _temple of the Nali Water God. Her team had been doing well up until that point; they had the advantage of strength in numbers, their supplies had been good, and they had gotten out of the ship early enough so that the aliens weren't alerted of their presence until they were miles away from the Kran. However, at their first meeting with a Skaarj warrior proved to be their downfall, as its comrades immediately located the humans after the final rounds had been fired. They were transported, by some sort of hovering tank, to the dark stone building with massive doors and a crucified Nali hanging between the two main entrances. The Nali was still alive. _

_From there she and her teammates had been crammed into a cell that barely was the size of the cargo bunks back on her ship. She was immediately singled out and was escorted down the dark hall by a Krall soldier, past dark cells whose inmates scurried into the far corners of their cages as the Krall walked by. They shoved her into a room at the end of the corridor. She was surprised to be staring at nine or ten women, all huddled in a corner, and all naked. They stared at her, their eyes wide in their moon-like faces, and one of them gestured to her and said something to her in Russian. Being a part of the English mechanical division that had been hired only days before the Kran had lifted off from Earth, she couldn't understand what was being said to her._

_And then the door across from the one that she came in opened, and the doorway was filled with the huge, eight foot frame of a Skaarj. The candle light set his body into harsh contrast, illuminating the green scales of his body and the Razik blades on his wrists. Her legs nearly gave way. His deep-set eyes immediately fixed upon her, and his mouth, set between two lower-jutting tusks, opened to let out an animalistic growl. _

_She had only seen three or four of the same species of alien, but she knew, somehow, that this one was in a class of its own. And then he had—_

She jerked back to reality. Someone was coming.

The door to her cell creaked open, and she barely blinked, barely breathed, as Shas slipped into her private space. She watched him under hooded eyes, pouring as much venom into her gaze as she could possibly muster. And then she saw that he had company. His hand was wrapped around its throat and was dragging it beside him, much like the way the Krall disposed of corpses—

A girl. Red-gold hair pulled into a ponytail, dirty silver flight suit, NEG symbol on her arm—she was probably with the group of Russian women. Was she going to be her cellmate?

And then Shas proceeded to hold the girl up, at arm's length, and, in one fluid motion, tear the flight suit from her body. Her body glowed pale and long-limbed in the light of the Tarydium lamp nailed to the wall. Shas glanced down and his handless concubine and made one or two thrusting motions of his narrow hips, which drew her eyes to his steadily growing erection, emerging from the flap of green scales between his legs.

She had to swallow a few times before speaking. "…No. Not in here. I will not watch this."

Shas seemed to consider her words, which was ridiculous, considering he needed to rely on a translating device to understand her words, and then ground out his nickname for her, which happened to be one of the only English words he could pronounce.

"…Happy."

When he had first started to call her that, she felt choked by the irony.

The girl's naked body hadn't moved; she hadn't screamed or whimpered or made any sort of movement against the fierce clutch that Shas had on her throat. Happy realized, with a short pang of horror, that she was dead.

No matter. Shas let out a growl and kept his eyes on Happy as he dug his talons into the girl's sides; his index digits met her nipples and sliced through the brown skin. Her body hung over his cock, suspended only where she had been impaled; her head lolled forwards. Blood trickled down her stomach in slow, dark lines.

Happy looked away, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She would not bear witness to this. _This _she refused to see. She could stand to see corpses being consumed by the Titan as bite-sized snacks; she could stand to see the poor Nali race have each of their four arms pulled off, slowly, like an insect's wings; she could be shot and raped and kicked and beaten—but not this.

She could hear Shas grunting in time with his thrusts. He hadn't entered the corpse yet—she knew exactly what he was doing, each move he was making, even without—he was going to bite down on the girl's neck, in a moment.

There. His quick groans were muffled. His cock was sliding back and forth along the girl's nether lips—back and forth, the mottled skin of the head beading with moisture—

_And she writhed in his grasp, shrieking as his talons dug deeper into her breasts, her blood staining his fingertips, and then he bit down harder and angled his hips upwards and he was—inside—_

The girl's legs jerked stiffly up and down as Shas increased his rhythm. He started snarling quietly, and she could feel his eyes on her—

_The pain was indescribable. There was something acidic in his semen, and every stroke brought new fire to her burning core. She jerked around on his cock like a rag doll, and his grip on her breasts grew tighter, and he released his hold on her neck to give a short bark of pleasure as he released inside of her with a wave of stinging, pulsing pain—_

He was breathing harder now, snorting in exertion, and Happy felt the first drops of her tears begin to slide down her cheeks as she tried not to focus on the blurring image in the corner of her eye.

The image of Shas raping her, for the first time.

And if she could look into the girl's empty eyes she knew what she would see, but didn't quite have the courage to face.

_This is your future. _

Shas thrust a few more sporadic times before he was done. Pulling out of her, he chittered with satisfaction as his member gleamed in the lamplight. He let the dead girl fall from his fingers in a heap at Happy's feet, turned, and left, letting the gate slam shut behind him. His footfalls echoed on the moldy wooden floor, and he was gone.

Happy realized she was trembling. She let her eyes drag from the gate to the lamp on the wall, and finally to the floor in front of her, where her reflection rested, face down, on the ground.

***

849 awoke to two sensations that had been absent from her life since she had first entered her life of crime and ultimate imprisonment: warmth and comfort.

Opening her bleary eyes, she perceived that she was on her back, lying on a straw mat on the floor of a low ceilinged hut. There was a table off in the corner to her right; a knife stuck out of the wood, its blade reflecting the light of a modest fire in the wall-centered fireplace. The hut had no windows and the ruddy light of the fire was the only light with which she was able to see by.

As her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she noticed a strange shadow that was cast on the opposite wall by the fireplace. It was several feet off the ground and seemed to raise and lower at even intervals. Her eyes traced the shadow up the wall, across the ceiling, and finally to the form that was hovering slightly above her.

Hovering.

If she had had any more energy she would have been up and out of the hut in a moment. However, as she was, all she could do was peer at the creature from under half-closed eyelids. The alien's body was mostly humanoid, save for the fact that its abnormally broad upper body had two sets of pectoral muscles, and four lean, sinewy arms grew out of its trunk. The upper two arms were folded in a praying motion, while the lower pair was spread out over the cot that 849 reclined on. Its face was fairly flat, with narrow nostrils and a wide mouth. It wore no clothes save for a sackcloth draped around its waist, and with its legs being folded midair as they were, it hardly provided coverage. The creature was decidedly male. There didn't seem to be a hair present on his tawny form. A deep humming came from within his throat; he appeared to be meditating.

_He's praying for me, _she thought. _Probably before he eats me. _

She lay there a while longer, listening as the snaps and pops from the fire punctuated the alien's low thrum, before her stomach gave a mighty growl. Her body curled almost involuntarily as she gasped in pain. Her body was rebelling against its lack of food. She decided it was time to go.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows, and braced her hands against the clay walls to help her stand. She shuffled past the hovering alien, hoping that he wouldn't break his trance or reach out and snap her neck with his unusually large hands. Before she reached the door the knife in the table caught her eye. She thought that it wouldn't hurt to grab it.

Besides the knife, a serpentine creature was flayed into pieces on the table. It smelled like rotting fish. She sighed in relief. _I might be able to get a catch out of the river, then. _

She grabbed the knife handled and worked the blade out of the wood. It was embedded deeply; she had to jump up on the table and give the knife several hefty yanks before she worked it free.

"Stubborn bastard," she muttered has she examined the blade. It was dull, but it would have to do. She turned again towards the door before she felt a weight on her shoulder. Turning her eyes downward, she saw four dull-nailed fingers working their way towards her throat.

She froze, and her breath caught. So he was a hostile creature, then. She hadn't heard him at all. Her fingers tightened around the knife hilt.

Flashes of memories burned across her mind—bodies lining the corridors of the _Rikers_, screaming, blood on the walls, dripping limbs, sightless eyes, death—

Barely containing a strangled scream, she swung the arm with the knife around, trying to hit the creature in the torso. He gave a startled cry and staggered backwards; when she looked at the blade it was clean. _Shit! _She'd missed.

She whirled around as the alien's hand left her shoulder, holding the knife straight out, preparing to rush him—

And was surprised to see him drop to his bony knees and slam his face into the ground, his hands flat on the floor, palms down. He gave a muffled cry into the floorboards.

She stood there, shaking uncontrollably, sweat beading on her forehead. The adrenaline rush finally ebbed and she sank into a kneeling position, panting. The alien did not move for a while, but as 849's breath returned to normal, he lifted his head and peered around the room with dull yellow eyes. When his gaze fell on her again, fear was written onto his countenance and he was up in a moment, diving into the corner behind the mat, covering his head with two hands and waving his other two in the air in a gesture of supplication. It was a ridiculous situation; this creature, who had to be at least seven feet tall, was begging for mercy from someone who was at least a foot shorter than he and was critically wounded to boot.

_Maybe I moved too soon, _she thought after a moment. She stood up slowly and twirled the knife between her fingers. The alien made a low moan and pressed himself closer to the wall. It looked like if he could sink into the ground he would've done it.

"Hey," she croaked through her parched lips. "Hey, it's okay."

The creature didn't move for a moment. She sighed and stepped forwards, holding her empty hand out to it. However, at this action, the alien's eyes widened in terror and it jumped up and bolted towards the door. She reached out and grabbed his arm, using his own momentum to swing his body around and sent it spinning into the side of the table. She stood in front of the door and held the knife towards him. "Calm down!"

The alien turned white. Every inch of his ridiculously tall body was quivering. Finally, he dropped to his knees and bowed towards her, muttering something under his breath. She leaned forwards. "Hey," she said again. "I'm not going to hurt you."

He didn't move. To prove her intentions, she placed the knife in front of him and sat cross legged on the floor. "Come on, you bastard," she said. "It's all right."

She breathed a sigh of relief as one of his broad hands snaked out and grasped the knife by the hilt. He sat up slowly, gazing at her blankly. She held her hands up, palms out. "I don't have anything," she said.

He looked from the knife to her hands to her face, and then slowly stood up, burying the knife's blade back into the wood of the table. She looked up at his towering form. He looked as if he was at a loss for words—if he even spoke 'words' at all. All she had heard him do was moan and blubber.

Her stomach growled again, and she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. She closed her eyes and said weakly, "You have anything I can eat?"

He didn't move, but he said something that sounded like, "By won da."

She blinked and looked at him. "Pardon?"

The creature coughed into the crook of his arm, but said nothing else. 849 sighed; this 'conversation' was going nowhere. The alien sat down at the table, his body rigid. After a pregnant pause, he spoke again. Irritably, 849 snapped at him. "Stop talking; I can't understand you."

She scooted closer to the fire. "God damn it," she muttered as her stomach knotted into itself again. She was starting to feel lightheaded.

Suddenly, the alien stood up. His eyes were growing wide again, and a pang of fear ran down 849's spine.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

The creature held up his hand, staring at the door with a stricken look on his face. The prisoner reflexively backed up, dimly wondering where her Enforcer was.

There was a steady beating of wings outside the hut; sharp cries echoed closely above them. After a moment, 849's heart leapt. A bird—food!

She sprang up and yanked the knife out of the table, much to the dismay of the alien, who grabbed at her shirt to keep her from going outside. She shrugged him off and flung the door open.

The first thing she saw was that she had been brought to the base of the canyon; hundreds of feet above her, the aft of the _Vortex Rikers _jutted away from the plateau and cast an ominous shadow over the hut and the dry ground. The river churned and lapped at the peninsula of land; from down here the roar of the waterfalls was nearly deafening. She wondered how she could have gotten down. Surely the alien didn't come and _carry _her?

Behind her, he stood in the doorway, wringing his hands and pleading desperately in his strange language. If she wasn't so breathtaken by the view, 849 would have paid more attention to the sound of the rush of wings. Her ignorance cost her dearly.

She was knocked to the ground from behind, nearly landing on the knife in her hand. She was about to whirl around on the alien for pushing her when she felt something wet trickling down her sides and sticking to her stomach. _Blood? _

There was a shadow on the ground, moving in a slow crescent away from her. She looked up. It was a flying creature of some sort, although it was completely different from any bird she had ever seen. Its body was ray-shaped, and it moved liquidly, up and down, as if it was underwater. It was featherless; instead, it had rubbery-looking green skin and a scaly tail that ended in a jagged hook, which gleamed red in the dim light of the sun.

It had struck her? She had been attacked by this…bird?

She sat up, watching the creature circle around her, listing towards her as if preparing for another strike. Suddenly, a gruesome mental image flashed through her brain—her own body, riddled with jagged gashes, rotting next to the river, being fed upon by both the bird and the strange male alien. Panic ripped through her, and she was up in a moment, trying to ignore the stinging pain in her back. She rushed the door of the hut, trying the doorknob; it was blocked.

"Let me in, damn you!" she hissed, making a fist and hitting the door. "I didn't know it was going to ambush me!"

She heard the alien muttering something inside. She almost became hysterical when she heard the animal swooping towards her again. She dropped to the ground and covered her head, wincing as she heard it strike the doorframe; it began squalling and shrieking desperately. She looked up tentatively. The creature's tailhook, poised to strike her flesh, was instead stuck in the wood. It was trapped.

849 hunched there, panting, before she realized she still had the knife clutched in her hand. She stood up on shaky legs, watching the thrashing animal, and suddenly, before she could think, she plunged the knife into the bird's back. It shuddered once as its spine snapped, and then it fell limp.

But 849 didn't stop there. She kept pulling the knife out and plunging it into the soft body, shaking, whispered screams breaking from her lips. Half of her strikes missed and made ugly gashes in the wood of the door. She didn't stop until long after the body was turned into inedible pulp and her knife was scraping against white bone.

When the alien finally opened the door to see if his human companion was still there, he found her passed out on the ground, the knife trapped in her white-knuckled grasp, and the Manta that had attacked her had been reduced to divots of skin on the ground.


	3. Faring Well

Chapter Three: Faring Well 

_Safe haven for those who seek peace. Welcome. _--inscription upon entering the Sunspire

They circled around each other like dancers, backs together, heads bowed gracefully, arms spread wide. Soft candlelight from the lamps on the wall threw their bodies into harsh contrast and made their shadows flicker on the stone walls. Even the clutch of their fingers around their weapons held a poetic curve, visible through the smears of blood on their skin.

"Alexi," one of them breathed quickly, with a voice as thin and dry as paper. "Alexi, I see them."

"Keep your arms out," came the whispered reply. "It makes you look bigger, and that intimidates the enemy."

"Oh, Jesus, Alexi. There is no way in hell that we can intimidate them. They're seven feet tall, for fuck's sake."

Alexi craned his head over his shoulder, glaring at his insubordinate partner. "Do you have a better idea, Karl? Hm?"

The smaller, thinner man clenched his teeth. "Well, if it weren't for your asinine directions, we wouldn't be stuck in this shithole in the first place. Did you ever think of that? Kira's arm wound is infected and you decide to take this goddamn tour of the whole place—I call foul on that."

The third figure in the circling trio hunched farther over, her papery voice barely audible to the two bickering men. "Alexi, they're getting closer—God, they've got blood all over them."

Alexi swallowed hard as his stomach flopped onto its side. He could make out the silhouettes of their stalkers, approaching them slowly, weaving in and out of the columns that loomed like tree trunks in the anteroom. Their claws sparked against the flagstones on the floor, faintly reminding him of knives dragging down sheets of metal. He shivered as a bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck. Even with twenty years of vigorous military training to his name, he had no idea about how to go up against these—monsters—that had been pursuing them ever since their ship, the _ISV-Kran, _had shattered in the atmosphere of this planet. Na Pali, it was called, according to the universal translator he carried at his hip. The extensive knowledge that the translator held in its databanks made it clear to Alexi that there had been human contact with this planet before, long enough to gather every aspect of the native languages, along with topographical maps of the planet's surface, and names for every village, temple, and military base they had come across. However, the translator told him nothing about the alien invaders that were swarming on the surface, much less about how to defeat them.

"Kira," he said, "As soon as Karl and I engage the enemy, I want you to get out of here, as fast as you can. There's a door to your left—do you see it? Just run for it and don't stop, no matter what you hear—"

Kira shook her head, her ragged blonde ponytail wagging back and forth with the motion. "I won't leave you," she whispered fiercely. "If we're going to die, we should go down together. I don't want to be alone."

"Hey!" Karl shouted, his voice ringing against the rock walls. One of the shadowy figures had rushed into the candlelight, and the mere sight of the alien was enough to break the trio's circle and send them scattering towards the far wall. Karl, obviously the target victim, choked as the front of the creature's spear bloomed through the front of his flight suit and pinned him against the crumbling brick wall. Alexi lost his footing as he fled and landed hard on his side, facing the grisly sight. He could only hold his breath as he saw Kira scramble for the far door. _Don't get caught, love. _

Their attacker approached Karl's struggling form, its jaws open in what was almost wide-mouthed smile, illuminated by multiple rows of uneven, dagger-like teeth. Alexi realized that the creature couldn't possibly close its mouth without impaling itself on its own incisors. Its face ended in a blunt snout, like a horse's, but its body was hunchbacked and its hands and feet were tipped with catlike claws. It was the body of a top predator, used to rending and tearing its prey with tooth and claw—so why was it using weaponry? The spear seemed ill suited for the monster. Looking closer, Alexi noticed that its torso was draped in some sort of light armor. It looked like it was playing army-man or some such childish game.

"Alexi," panted Karl, wringing his hands around the spear handle protruding out of his stomach.

"Don't move!" Alexi hissed, slowly bringing his Enforcer up to eye level. "Play dead, God dammit, or you will be!"

The alien opened its mouth wider, and its tongue protruded, spilling saliva onto the floor. It looked like the pantomime of a laugh. Alexi seized his chance. He steadied his hand and pulled the trigger, and the Enforcer's bullet bit neatly through the slice of thick pink flesh.

Reeling and hissing, the alien reared up to its full height, dragging its attention away from Karl and focusing on its attacker. Blood and saliva ran out of the sides its mouth in red rivers. Clenching his jaw, Alexi pulled the trigger again and again, aiming for the creature's head, silently cheering as each bullet brought a fresh spurt of red. After an entire clip had been emptied into it, the alien finally teetered onto its front legs and slid to the ground.

Alexi scrambled to his feet and rushed over to Karl's still form, fearing the worst. He put his hands on his comrade's shoulders. "We've gotta get you out of here," he said hurriedly, feeling at Karl's neck and paling at the fluttering pulse he found there. "Can you walk?"

Karl breathed in a few times, slowly. "I can't feel much."

"Well, we'll make due. All right, I need you too keep absolutely still. I'm going to try to cut the spearhead out of the wall." Alexi fumbled with his knife and wedged his hand into the space between Karl's chest and the wall.

"Wh…where's the other one?" Karl struggled to turn his head. "There were two, or three—did you see its eyes?"

Alexi swallowed, as his fingers slipped around the hilt of the knife. "You're going to make me stab you. And what's the point in wondering about the other one when you're here pinned to the wall like a goddamn photograph? I probably scared it off, anyway."

The bricks flaked under the knife blade, and soon a pile of rubble had pooled beneath Karl's feet. However, Alexi couldn't see the spear tip. He stifled a growl of frustration, but Karl was already alerted to the problem. "Alexi, I know that you don't like to follow orders, but come on. This is ridiculous. By this time you could've gotten all the way to the SkyElevator with Kira by now. Just let me get myself out of this mess, all right?"

Alexi laughed hoarsely. "What are _you _going to do?"

Karl's eyes looked huge in his ashen face. "If you'll hand me my Enforcer, please?"

Alexi's smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. "No. No. Damn it, Karl, no. What the fuck are you thinking? See, this is why I'm the leader in this troop. You always look at the bad side of things—"

"I'm a fucking realist, Alexi! Do you see this huge fucking spear that I'm skewered on? What are you going to do when you get that spearhead out of the wall—which might take, oh, a week or so? You can't pull it out of me."

"I can cut it," Alexi said helplessly.

"Cut it with what? Magic?!"

A panicked scream echoed from the level above them. A female's scream. Alexi looked at the ceiling, his heart in his throat. "Kira—!"

"Leave me!" Karl managed to lift his arm and seize his commander by the strap of his chest armor. "Give me my Enforcer and get the fuck out of here."

Alexi seemed rooted to the spot until he heard the desperate pounding of footsteps above him. Grimly he unsnapped Karl's leg holster and pulled out the sleek pistol, clasping his dying comrade's hand with his own as he delivered the gun to its owner.

"It was an honor working with you," he said. Karl looked down at the Enforcer in his hand as Alexi took off running, kicking the door open and disappearing into the hallway. Alexi was halfway up the staircase when he heard the shot.

He was rapidly approaching a brightly lit anteroom, but as he passed under the archway, he was stopped in his tracks by the sight that greeted him. Kira, slung over the shoulder of one of their attackers, bleeding heavily from a gash on her forehead. The creature opened its mouth wider, wagging its tongue at Alexi, and suddenly it was standing right in front of him—_how does it move so quickly?—_and its teeth were all around him, and the sickening stench of rotten breath filled his senses, and he whispered Kira's name as the creature's jaws closed around his head.

_**Bluff Eversmoking Monastery**_

Grorq tapped the electronic shipping log against his thigh, watching impatiently as a group of his Red Hand tribe struggled to guide an he overflowing hovercart, laden with looted equipment from the downed Terran ship _ISV-Kran, _into the shipment room. The hovering mechanism on the machine was malfunctioning, and the cart would drop from the air every few seconds, threatening to spill the thousands of pounds of cargo it held all over the metal grating of the floor. Grorq set his teeth._ This shit wouldn't have happened if the Skaarj let my mechanics to fix their own equipment, _he thought bitterly. _But there's so much paperwork to put through the system to even begin that kind of work that we'd be better off building a new cart altogether. _

Leaning heavily on his concussion staff, Grorq breathed a sigh of relief as his team finally managed to push the cart into position in the shipment room, seconds before the mechanics gave out completely and crashed to the floor, jarring its cargo, but otherwise doing no damage.

"Finally," he said, snapping the log shut and tucking it into the crook of his elbow. "Now close that door and get back to your posts. Don't say anything to Bharuk about that cart or it'll be my head, and yours."

Grorq turned on his heel and walked heavily down the corridor to return to his quarters. As a Krall, he was bound to be faithful to his Skaarj overseers, but he didn't stomach well the idea of being a slave to another race, especially one as arrogant as the Skaarj. Of course, Krall weren't so abused as the Nali, and there were always the Brutes to do the dirty work, but Grorq never did understand why they were in the employ of the galactic assholes. Krall were just as strong, just as smart, and just as ruthless as the Skaarj, but somehow the tables were turned, and here he was, a puppet on a string, while the Skaarj expanded their empire.

Descending the stone steps of the monastery tower, Grorq stopped at the hexagonal door of the room of his Skaarj general, swallowed his pride, and knocked.

An instant later the door opened. The mottled green scales of Bharuk's face were barely visible in the candlelit gloom. The gold hoop that was impaled through one of the Skaarj's tusks gleamed as he talked. "Grorq. Just the bastard I needed to see. Some of your crew caputured a Terran female. The Nali are calling her their savior. They're bringing her here—here!—of all places. Get a cell ready. Now."

The door closed. Grorq stared at the wood, wondering if his hatred was palpable through the wood. After a moment, his temper cooled and he descended the steps to the prison block.

Another Terran.

How interesting.

_**Nyleve's Falls **_

849 sat on a low wooden chair near the fire, a roughly-woven blanket draped over her hunched shoulders. Her bony hands were wrapped around a cup of steaming something that the alien had shoved into her grasp before leaving the hut, seconds or minutes or hours beforehand; she couldn't really remember. All she knew was that, at the first sip, the liquid had burned its bitter, fishy way down her throat, and she couldn't bring herself to swallow it. Her withered stomach had enough trouble digesting the little she had managed to keep down; it was taking her a while to get used to the food here. Instead, her hands drew warmth from the cup as the rest of her body soaked up the orange firelight, so whatever she suffered because of her hunger pangs was made up for in heat and comfort.

She yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth. Daytime on this planet seemed to be unbearably long, seeing as there were two suns present in the sky, and if one set, the other was six hours behind. However, she seemed to be sleeping more and more whether or not it was sunny outside, and the creature that was housing her didn't seem to mind. She was thankful that he was so hospitable even after their rocky introduction. She didn't even know his name yet; they didn't bother talking to each other after that first day. Perhaps that was why they got along.

The hut was getting smoky; the chimney was old and cracked in places, and after hours of burning, wisps of grey smoke had leaked from the chinks and into the windowless room. After a moment, she steeled herself and brought the cup to her lips again, swallowing another mouthful before she could gag on it. Placing the cup on the floor next to the chair, she got up and half-limped towards the door, opening it cautiously to peek outside. Once she was sure of her solitary position, she opened the door all the way and sat down in the doorway, drawing the blanket tighter around her, warding off the chill in the wet air.

She could see strong rolling currents rippling underneath the surface of the water in the river, like moving muscles under skin. The spray that boiled up from where the waterfall met the river floated in a silver cloud that drenched the vegetation on the skinny stretch of land underneath the plateau. It was a damp place to live, at best. 849 looked up. The engine bell of the _Rikers _had become a favored nesting ground for the aqua-feathered birds that wheeled circles in the dappled yellow sky.

Well. She was fed, she was clothed, and her wounds were healing—not painlessly, but her life was no longer in danger. The crash seemed so long ago, and so surreal, that the only thing that reminded her that she was a castaway was the shadow of the engine bell hanging over the little hut. She huffed a contented sigh and leaned her head against the doorframe. Her eyes glazed slightly, and the lids fluttered shut.

She dreamed.

_**Dark Arena**_

Happy swayed on her bare feet, her shoulders aching under the weight of a heavy metal collar that was clamped around her neck. Frigid wind cut through the open-air hallway and bit right through her naked body, turning her lips bright blue and making her bones ache. She clenched her hands together, trying to blink the stars out of her vision. Earlier that week Shas had struck her face so hard that she had been temporarily blinded, and she was still suffering visional difficulties.

She felt a tug at the chain that was connected to her collar and looked over her shoulder, her teeth chattering. Shas had the silver metal clenched in his powerful hand, and it was obvious that he wanted her to stand closer to him. Steeling herself, she limped towards the bench that he was seated on. Twinges of pain shot through her foot and ankle, and looking down, she saw that the skin on her feet had frozen to the metal flooring and she had inadvertently stripped the bottom of her foot of bits of flesh when she started walking. She sighed. It wasn't like she was going to be doing a lot of walking, anyway. She didn't even know why Shas had taken her for this little trip in the first place. They had been sitting in the freezing winds for an hour already; he seemed to be waiting for something, but why he had taken her for company was beyond her.

Shas growled when Happy took her place by his side, but made no other move. She swallowed, feeling her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. She was able to see outside through the arches in the opposite wall, and she tried not to look down. They were ten stories up, facing the other side of the circular arena, and below them was the sand pit and a towering square structure known as the 'tree', from where the Skaarj hung the corpses of the Nali and humans who had been slaughtered by the Titan. The tree was empty now, but—the terrible thought made her shudder—perhaps that was why Shas brought her out of her cell. He was tired of looking at the dry, pale sand—he wanted blood.

_Then why would he bring you ten stories up? Calm down. You'll kill yourself faster._

She forced a huge intake of air to clear her lungs, feeling the cold burn its way down her already dry throat. She decided instead to focus on the sky, which she hadn't seen in months, and memorize the way the clouds moved and the way the moon seemed to swim through the mounds of blue and purple and white, stained thus by the sunset and the reflection of light in the atmosphere. To her, it was freedom. It was beautiful and it was free and it _wasn't hers. _

Shas stood up suddenly; Happy was broken out of her reverie by the movement, and by the sounds of tramping feet on the metal flooring. She looked down the curved hallway and saw a troop of four Scouts approaching them. Two of them were struggling to hold down a flailing figure. Happy squinted, but couldn't make out what it was in the dim candlelight. It was tall—perhaps it was another Nali. The Scouts approached and dropped to one knee in front of Shas. It was then that Happy saw that the figure was a human.

For a moment, she couldn't speak. Even if she could form words, she wouldn't know what to say. _Hello, how are you, my name is Happy and we're both going to die._ However, the other human had no problem breaking the ice.

"Oh, so there's more? And here I was thinking I was the only one."

The two Skaarj that were pinioning the girl's arms tightened their grips and forced her to the ground along with them. One of the Scouts stood up and began speaking to Shas, in their guttural, forced, growling tongue. The girl looked back up at Happy and made a face. "They like it rough, huh?"

Happy was amazed that the woman could speak so easily in front of all of these Skaarj. Rising Shas's wrath, she managed, after swallowing a few times, to murmur, "Don't call attention to yourself and don't make too much—"

Shas yanked down on the chain, hard, and the weight of the frozen collar against her bony shoulder forced her to the ground. Her head struck the metal and the stars that she had been fighting to blink back exploded into her vision again. She didn't bother getting up, but she heard the girl gasp in surprise.

"Hey, why'd ya pick on the little thing? Jesus, you're going to kill her."

_I can only hope, _Happy thought. She heard a flutter of movement and another sharp exclamation from the girl, and then Shas's hand around her arm, pulling her up, shoving her forwards; something else grabbed her collar. She opened her eyes and realized that she was being led down the hall, following the Scouts with the girl in tow, and that Shas was behind her, arms crossed over his huge chest, watching. Then she was ushered through a side door and darkness enveloped her once more. They descended the familiar steps to the prison block, and then another flight into the basement cells. Happy felt a wave of despair crash over her as one of the scouts unlocked the door to her prison cell. _Just a little key—such a little thing--! _

First she was shoved in, and then, surprisingly, the other girl. The door slammed, and their captors' footfalls fell away. In the gloom, the other girl gave a frustrated snort and slid down the wall, stretching her legs out in front of her. "I can't see a damn thing," she said, "and it smells like something died in here."

Happy crouched in the corner. "In the far corner," she said quietly, pointing, "there's a waste bucket. Across from it is a dead girl. Don't go over there."

The girl breathed in evenly. "I'm sorry. A friend of yours?"

Happy looked at her mangled hands. "No, I didn't know her. Shas brought her in here already dead and—and left her here."

"Shas? Oh, the bitch that was tossing you around out there?" The girl stretched. "I named mine, too. Well, the one that I spent the most time with, of course. Came into our camp and killed everyone but me—all men, isn't that funny? Anyway, I named him Attila. Not very original, but it was fun to call him that. He was a little guy, too, littler than the others. It bothered him quite a bit that I was just as tall as he was. I could kick him in the balls whenever I wanted, heheh." The girl chuckled. "Yeah, but he got run through by his buddies when they discovered that he had a human captive and hadn't reported it. Then they packed me up and brought me here. Where is 'here', anyway?"

Happy couldn't believe that this girl was so flippant about being captured by the Skaarj. And the way she had talked about her Skaarj captor—Attila?—like was a friend and not a bloodthirsty murderer like the rest of them—had she gone insane?

"They call this the Dark Arena," she said slowly, lifting the collar and trying to rub the rawness out of her shoulders. Her fingers came away wet with blood.

"Oh, where did you come from, anyway?" the girl asked, seemingly disregarding Happy's answer. "God, there seems to be a lot of people on this planet. I came down with the _ISV-Kran. _We were downed in this area four months ago, but I heard another ship crashed—the Vortex something or other, I can't remember. Are you a prisoner?"

_All of this talking is drying me up, _Happy thought, but she said, "Then we're from the same ship."

"Oh, really?" The girl seemed excited. "What was your position?"

"I can't remember."

The girl scooted closer. "My name's Norianna. I was a medical trainee, but that's all blown out of the water, now, isn't it?" She squinted at Happy. "Oh, dear, your hand."

"Look," Happy said, her voice cracking. "Let's just skip all of this talk and get right to the point. In a matter of minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks, Shas or his guards will come in here and chain us to the wall or burn or crucify or shoot or rape us, and all of this talking will have gotten us nowhere. It's best to just leave off at 'hello, nice to meet you', and not get too attached, or too hopeful, or dwell on the past. We're here, we're trapped, and I will not suffer and die because you won't learn to shut up."

She finished, panting. Norianna was silent for a moment, and then chuckled. "You really didn't make a point there," she said, smiling brightly, "but I understand your concern. I'll humor you, for now, but first tell me your name. I can't not know my bunkmate's name."

Happy closed her eyes and concentrated. "They call me Happy."


	4. Temporary Rift

Chapter Four: Temporary Rift

"_All prisoners remain in your cells."_

_The whole ship was shaking all around her, shaking and screaming, it seemed, with the voices of a thousand prisoners raised in desperate wailing, drowning out the computer interface ordering them to stay where they were—not like they had any choice. The cell block pulsed with red and yellow warning lights, punctuated by flashes of white as the lights on the ceiling blew out in showers of sparks and shards of glass. She could barely keep her grip on her cot; the floor kept lurching upwards, trying to buck her into the bunk above her head. The purple energy field that blocked her freedom held strong, though, and this was what made her angrier than ever. She saw the shadow of a guard from between the fluorescent bars, and immediately she was up on unsteady feet to confront him._

"_Ash, what's going on? Why aren't they telling us anything?"_

_The guard adjusted his ball cap and shrugged, staggering on his feet as another explosion rocked the ship to the side. "I'm not in contact with the bridge," he shouted over the alarms. "The only thing I've been told his to make sure your doors are secure—which they are, so now I'm going to get the hell out of here."_

_The _Vortex Rikers _reared upwards, making her knees crumple and forcing her to the floor. Ash barely caught himself against the wall. "What do you mean?" she choked when she got her breath back. "They have to let us out so we can get to the escape pods!"_

"_There aren't enough escape pods for prisoners. You know that. Only the crew leaves in an emergency such as this." Ash scratched the back of his head. "Come on, 849, don't give me that look. You're a prisoner—a high level 800, remember? There's, what, maybe nine hundred something convicts on this ship, total? Even if we did decide to evacuate the prisoners, we'd get the lower numbers first. It's just that way life is, 849. You resigned yourself to this when you committed the crime."_

_She couldn't comprehend what he was saying. Not enough escape pods? But of course there had to be—they were told as much before they boarded, and surely, surely, the crew were under penalty of law if they lied to their own cargo—their own prisoners—and she couldn't possibly be trapped here. To leave them here—to leave nine hundred humans to die—it was manslaughter. _

_Ash turned and wobbled towards the door, but paused as he reached the threshold and turned and looked over his shoulder. 849 was still sitting on the floor of her cell, palms braced against the metal panels, eyes and face blank. Ash sighed and adjusted his hat again. "Listen, 849. It'll be quick. So don't worry, all right?"_

_He disappeared from the block, and suddenly all of 849's energy came back in a rush. "Ash!" she pushed herself up from the floor, throwing herself against the energy field. It sent sharp electric shocks rushing through her skin. "Ash, come back here!" She added her voice to the cacophony of screams and cries from the other inmates who had heard the guard's words. "Let us out! We can't die like this! You can't let us die like this!"_

_It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair. He had no idea what landed her in the prison cell, so how could he presume to tell her that it was what she chose? She wanted life. She wanted to choose life, but she wasn't given the freedom to do so. It was maddening, not being able to choose her fate. She raised her voice in one last defiant cry: "I will live, Ash! I will live!"_

_The floor suddenly dropped out from underneath her, and she flew backwards, and the last thing she saw were the purple lights of her gate as the back wall met her head and her hip at an intimate position and hurled her into unconsciousness. _

She came up from her nightmare slowly, breathing a slow sigh of relief as the images faded slowly back into her subconscious, where, although they were still painful to recall, their pain was dulled by time and purposeful amnesia of the more gruesome recollections. She roused herself and stretched, sitting up from her mattress and pushing the straw blanket off of her legs. The alien had set up her living quarters in his attic, pushing trunks and barrels out of the way and giving her his own bed; she had protested this at first, but the alien insisted to the point where, by means of excessive signing and demonstration, he threatened to sleep outside if she did not accept his offering. She smiled at the memory of him sitting on the cold ground, both pairs of arms crossed, resisting her attempts to drag him back inside. His overly zealous acts to make her comfortable were endearing.

She yawned as she crawled out of bed towards the ladder that led from the attic to the lower floor. She paused at the entrance of the trapdoor, staring below; apparently, her alien friend had already started a fire.

"Did'ja catch anything good?" she called as she started climbing down the ladder. She had taken to talking to her four-armed friend, even though he never answered back. He listened very well—or at least he pretended that he was listening. "I've decided that I really like the taste of those little biterfish—"

She stopped suddenly, halfway down the ladder. Her alien friend was standing over a still figure in front of the fireplace, praying to the statue on the mantle, with one pair of hands stretched out over the prone body. As 849 came down the ladder, he turned and held one finger to his lips. She nodded and stepped as softly as she could over to the limp body, standing quietly beside her friend as she studied the figure on the floor. He was still breathing.

His face looked so familiar, even underneath the scraped-off skin and caking of mud. Her eyes travelled down his body. He wore a _Rikers _staff uniform, with the red band around one arm that identified him as a block guard. Her heart skipped as her eyes fell on the bill of a burnt baseball hat that stuck out of the man's pocket.

Ash.

She swallowed, thickly, as her blood began to race. _This man left you to die this man left you to die this man had the power to save you and he left you to die— _

The alien stalled his praying, alerted to the fact that 849 was clenching and unclenching her hands, visibly trembling. Her nostrils flared as she sucked in a deep breath.

"You saved him," she said in a shaking voice, "but he was going to let me die. He was going to let me die like a rat in a cage and you—you rescued him—oh!"

She turned and aimed a savage kick at one of the low chairs by the table; it flew into the opposite wall and splintered into pieces. The alien flinched away, getting down on one knee and holding his hands out in supplication. He moaned piteously, but 849 would have none of it. There he was, alive and breathing, after leaving her to perish. _He could have pushed a button and set you free!—_and it mattered not that she was alive, as well, and he was worse off than she was. She expected some sort of vengeance, some sort of heavenly revenge, to deprive him of what he was too selfish to share with her. She hated him for living. She hated him for breathing.

The hut was suddenly too small for the three of them. She let out a strangled scream and threw the door open, running into the sea of grey fog that waited for her beyond the threshold. It was thick and damp, but if she looked up she could still see the engine bell, so she couldn't get lost. The waterfalls roared somewhere off to her right, and she suddenly found herself trying to run through freezing cold, calf-deep water. She stumbled to a halt, panting, and felt her way back to the dry sand at the bank of the river. Once there, she flopped into a sitting position and crossed her arms over her knees, looking sullenly at the wisps of fog dancing across the water and thinking of every dirty word she could hurl at the cell block guard once he woke up.

She was so deep in thought about the tongue-lashing she was going to give Ash that, when a coffee-colored hand came out of the mist from behind to rest on her shoulder, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

She did, however, jump up, spin around, and reflexively backhand whatever had touched her. She stood there panting, her hand smarting, as the ground in front of her groaned in pain. When she saw it shift, she let her breath out in a whoosh.

"Holy shit, Ash," she said, her heart in her throat. "Don't _do _that to me!"

"I stood there for five minutes saying your number, you bitch!" Ash complained, sitting up and rubbing his cheek. "Damn, you made of metal or something? That fucking hurt!" He looked at his hand. "As if my face wasn't busted up enough…what?"

849 stood in the shallows, her arms crossed, glaring at him. Ash slowly began to realize what she was angry—no, infuriated—about. "Would you like to talk about what happened back on the ship?"

"There's nothing to talk about!" 849 exploded, kicking the water and showering Ash with cold spray. "You left me—left all of us—there to die while you cowards turned tail and ran for the escape pods! You are all heartless sons of bitches and I hoped every last one of you died—because that's what would've happened to us!"

Ash stood up, glaring back at the prisoner. "Then why am _I _still here, dumbass?!"

849 opened her mouth to shoot back a retort, but logic stopped her. Why, indeed? There were enough escape pods for all of the crew, surely? However, pride got the best of her, and she snorted childishly, "I don't know, but I wish you weren't."

"There weren't any escape pods on the _Vortex Rikers_," Ash snapped. "Are you listening to me? Look at me, 849. _There were no escape pods._"

"Bullshit!" 849 spat, kicking water at him again. "Do you think I'm stupid? I _flew _starships like this, before, and _all _of them had pods! They wouldn't send a crew out into deep space without some kind of escape ship."

"Stop that!" Ash held up his hands to shield his face from the drops of water. "That's what I thought, too, but when we got to the cargo bay, there was nothing. A bunch of boxes, that's _it._ Captain was pretty pissed, to put it mildly, but we couldn't do anything except ride the _Rikers _all the way to the ground."

The prisoner stared skeptically at Ash. "You mean nobody got out?"

"Not a damn one."

She stared at her feet for a moment, letting the realization sink in. Then she sloshed out of the river, sitting on the bank next to Ash, and pulled off her boots. "My legs are soaked," she complained, just to break the silence.

_All those people. _

She set her boots off to the side to dry and stretched her legs in front of her. Beside her, Ash pulled his baseball cap out of his pocket and adjusted the band, chewing his lip thoughtfully. Then he cleared his throat and said quietly, "I heard you, you know."

849 cast a half-lidded glance to the side.

Ash continued. "I heard you scream at me as I was leaving. I was halfway down the hall when you said, 'I will live.' I thought that was pretty stupid of you to say, at the time, but you sounded really ballsy, you know—all determined and all. I knew you were mad, but I couldn't help it. And then, when we crashed, I thought, 'this is it, I'm going to die', and I woke up, and I was all beat up but alive, and there was no way that I could've gotten back to the cell block to see if you were alive, so we started walking—"

"Wait a minute," 849 interrupted. "We? Who's 'we'?"

"Oh, I was with a couple of my buddies at the time, and we decided that the _Rikers'_s hull was way too unstable to use as a shelter, so we loaded up with some Enforcers and Dispersion Pistols and just started walking. Ran into some nasty sons of bitches in this mining facility—Skaarj—see?"

He pulled a rectangular computer out from his leg pocket. It was about the size of a small notebook pad and glowed fluorescent green in the fog. He tapped the pad with a forefinger and it flickered to life. "This is a universal translator," the guard explained as his fingers danced over the screen, pulling up subscreens and tapping buttons on the sides of the instrument. "It's standard issue for military personnel. I found it in the Captain's jacket. He was dead, of course, but this thing is really useful. It's got all sorts of information about this planet. I think it's a newer release, because we were communicating with another guy with one of these from the _ISV-Kran _and he said he didn't have a clue as to what Skaarj were or whatever. We lost contact with him a couple days ago, but—here."

He handed the translator over to 849. Rotating on the screen was a holographic image of a hulking, muscular creature with mottled green scales and a whiplike tail. It sent a thrill down her spine. "I saw one of those as I was leaving the _Rikers_," she said, the memory leaving her cold. "It slaughtered a roomful of people."

"Yeah," Ash said. "They're everywhere, and they've got other aliens to do their dirty work. Not that they shirk in that department, either, but who am I to know about what they do?"

"Do you know what that four-armed man calls himself? Or what this place is called?"

"Oh! See, this is something you've got to remember. Skaarj aren't the natural inhabitants of this planet, the four armed guys are. They're called 'Nali' and this planet is Na Pali. The Skaarj are like, oh, I don't know, parasites? They came here about the same time that the _ISV-Kran _crashed and started farming the Nali like animals. It's terrible what these people are subjugated to, but for some reason they welcome the humans and try to shield us from harm. It's sad—they could be putting their energy into saving themselves, but instead they choose to help us."

849 thought about how she had treated her Nali rescuer. She turned red from shame. _Poor guy. _

Ash flicked the power button on the translator. "Anyway, when we ran into the Skaarj, we got our asses handed to us. I hightailed it out of that place and came straight back here, but I must have passed out. I woke up in that hut when you started screaming. I was actually surprised that you lived, but I felt happy, too. I mean, you came through on your promise to me."

"It wasn't a promise," 849 said slowly. "It was a threat."

"Come on, now," Ash said, slapping the prisoner on the back with a broad hand. "You lived, I lived, and now we're all going to live happily ever after, right?"

"Don't touch me," she snapped. "You left me to die. You could have pushed a button, Ash—it would've been that easy!"

Ash blew out a heavy sigh of frustration and stood up. "No, 849, it would _not _have been that easy and you know it. And we were all in the same situation, either way."

"You didn't give me a choice!"

Ash looked down at her, his face dark with anger. "None of us had a choice!"

His voice echoed on the canyon walls. 849 stared up at him with smoldering eyes, her lips twitching, trying to think of something to say. She wasn't angry with him any more; indeed, she was glad to have another human to vent her anger and fear and frustration to, but she didn't know how to express her sentiment in words. What could she say? The fact of the matter was, she couldn't accept that none of them were in control of their fates. There was no driving purpose to their suffering, no method to the planet's madness. It was all happening just…because.

She wanted to say that she was glad he survived the wreck, and she wasn't mad at him because as long as he was alive then she had a friend, and that somehow she hoped they'd make it off Na Pali alive, but all she could grind out was, "I'm going inside to apologize to my friend."

Ash watched in silence as she hurried off to the hut, and then followed, not wanting to remain alone in the thick morning fog. He had a horrible, sinking feeling that they all three of them were being watched.

_**Dark Arena**_

High General Shas-ulhara of the first Great Talon ("General" to his troops and "Shas" to his particularly ugly Terran whore locked down in the basement somewhere) braced his hands against the metal edges of the hologram projector and closed his eyes for a moment against the harsh glare of the computer generated graphics. Behind him, one of his lower gunner generals, Chakti 'Narj or something like that—he didn't pay much attention to names—, shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Shas cleared his throat and said, without turning around, "Would you mind explaining to me why I work with such a group of _idiots?_"

Chakti didn't say anything. Shas stepped back from the screen and pointed with a taloned finger to the spinning image. "What is this, Chakti." It was a statement more than a question. "Please tell me what it is."

Chakti balked at the direct question. His anxiety was understandable, of course; General Shas-ulhara, _the _GeneralShas-ulhara, cut an imposing figure in the dark room. Easily soaring over eight feet, with a tattooed body scored with countless battle scars that outlined his bulging muscles, and a reputation that earned him the nickname "The Walking Death" on his first month on Na Pali, Shas's ranking as third only below the Source and the Warlord was well deserved. He struck fear into the hearts of his own men; their respect for him was out of abject terror rather than admiration. True, though; Shas had proven his worth as an honorable warrior in previous battles with the Krall and the Brutes, but once faced with Terran opposition, Shas acted as if he was one possessed. One Skaarj general had gone so far as to accuse Shas of being frightened of such an intelligent enemy—quite a foolish move. Shas had actually gotten an admonition from the Source after she heard about the unfortunate general's fate. The other soldiers learned quickly from example—never say _anything _to Shas that he didn't want to hear.

_Too bad I'm not a fucking mind-reader, _Chakti grumped, stepping up to the hologram. "It's a map of NyLeve's Falls, about three clicks southwest of the Rajrigar Mines."

Shas nodded thoughtfully, crossing his arms over his chest. "And what is that I see—that small metal boxy-thing. Glowing." Another statement, demanding to be answered.

Chakti suppressed an irritated growl and bent closer to the hologram. "It's a ship, sir."

"One of ours?"

"No. A Terran vessel."

"Ah," Shas thrummed. "I see, I see."

Without warning, he flexed his wrist and slashed his Razick blades across Chakti's face, watching passively as his lieutenant's face disappeared under a wash of blood. The unfortunate Skaarj howled and brought both hands up to cover his wounds.

"Is that _not _in your patrol section?" Shas continued. "Is that _not _a major occurrence that needed to be reported? Tell me why I didn't know about this Terran ship, soldier. Are there Terrans still alive living in its ruins? What have you not told me?"

"I sent a team out to investigate but they hadn't replied back to me," Chakti hissed, his lips spattering blood on the floor as he spoke. The Rajrigar team found the ship first. This is not my doing."

Shas twitched his tail. "It is if I say it is," he said quietly, dangerously. "Now," he continued, reaching out and wrapping his claws around Chakti's neck, "I want you to drag your ass out to that crash site yourself and report back to me what you find, within the next pass of the sun, or the cut you will receive will indeed be fatal. Now get out of my ship, and out of my sight."

Chakti didn't bother saluting Shas as he exited the room. _The General be damned, _he thought as he stalked down the hallway. _This has gone on long enough. _

Shas turned back to the computer and closed the hologram projection screen. Once the room was dark, he pushed his lower lip out in contemplation. More Terrans, always more Terrans. And the Nali were getting even more skittish with every shipment of two-legged creatures that the Skaarj managed to capture.

Word had gotten out among the Nali, spreading like wildfire, reaching the ears of the lower Skaarj captains and finally made its whispering way to Shas's ship. An uprising. A _Nali _uprising, even, and that was even more laughable. At least, it was laughable until he realized that the entire world of Na Pali was holding its breath and waiting.

They believed the crashed ships to be a sign. Word was out that a warrior princess had come to free the Nali from Skaarj rule. A Terran.

Shas clenched his hands. Any source of hope to the Nali was cause for concern. Total domination was key to their rule on the planet. If the Nali thought their savior had come, then they would certainly do anything to help the Terran. With useless soldiers like Chakti on the job, there were sure to be slip-ups. The Terran would slip through the cracks and that would mean bad business for Shas—or even worse, for the Source.

This was going to take finesse, something he never had the patience for, and subtlety, which was laughable. He had to test Skaarj control over the Nali; had to find out if the Nali were really hoping for deliverance or too concerned about their lives to worry about helping any Terrans, which, according to Skaarj rule, was strictly forbidden. He had to bait them. He had to trap them.

He thought for a moment, and then his tail swished from side to side in an almost comical wagging motion.

Well. Perhaps Happy had a greater use after all.

_**Nyleve's Falls**_

_Myscha's Journal:_

_I found another one today; he was lying at the entrance to one of the mining tunnels and moaning. _

_The bald one is healing much better, and the one that's dark like coal is up and speaking his strange language with the girl. They don't understand me, but it's only a matter of time before they realize that they are still in very great danger. The Skaarj will come investigate the crashed Star Chariot, and my friends will be captured and taken, like all the rest. I hardly know how I evaded capture, myself, but I am not confident about holding off my enemies for long. All I can do is pray to Chizra for balance, and perhaps make a trip to the temple if the Terrans get away safely._

_But—I have heard the rumors, the beautiful, terrible rumors, and I look at my two Terrans every day, and I think—that if he—that if she—_

_I must not give up. I must keep on praying, and hoping, and perhaps everything will work out for my people, and theirs. _


	5. Pro Patria Mori

A.N. I'm very sorry this took so long to write. Lots of stuff happened that kept me from working on this diligently. Plus, I wrote an entire section and then took it out, and blah blah blah, long story short, another very short chapter. Title for this and chapter two's titles, together, mean "It is meet and just to die for one's country."

For Indiana Englishgirl, Miss Melaine. August 11, 2008. Your suitcase is always packed.

Chapter Five: Pro Patria Mori

Science Officer Kira Argmanov—Kira Onalopov if that indecisive jerk Alexi would grow the balls to drop the question—was last in a long line of prisoners that were currently chained to the wall in a cellar of the Bluff Eversmoking Monastery. From the look of things, she was the only prisoner they had who wasn't seven feet tall with an extra pair of arms growing out of her ribcage—which explained why the entire regiment of guards were clustered around her, poking her skin, pulling her hair, and clattering to each other when she yelped and whimpered like a lost puppy. They were miniature versions of the beasts that attacked her team members back in the Sunspire, but they still towered over her, and their teeth were just as sharp. To top it all off, she was still shivering from the harrowing experience of crossing a ridiculously narrow land bridge while being buffeted from side to side by subzero winds. She practically had hand to walk toe-to-toe to keep her balance, but her lack of confidence rested on the fact that she was chained, via a metal collar, to all of the other prisoners by the same link, meaning that if one of them had lost his step, everyone would have fallen.

She bit her lips and kept her eyes on the ground, knowing full well what kind of danger she had gotten into. She knew she should've stayed by Alexi and Karl—but when she had seen those monsters come at her teammates, the courage went out of her. It was like her legs started moving on their own—but now look where they had gotten her. She sighed. She hadn't even made it all the way up the staircase before she had caught the blunt end of a spear with her forehead. Her temples still smarted.

_The team should've stayed in Spire Village, _she thought wretchedly, but then the memory of that four-story monstrosity stomping into the herding grounds quickly erased that idea. Four months of smooth living with the Nali ruined by a Titan, which was the only creature they had encountered besides the green-skinned lizard men. These tongue-y monsters, however, she had no clue how to deal with, or who they were allies with—certainly not the ISV-Kran crew, and definitely not the Nali. She had to feel sorry for the nervous things—they didn't have a fighting chance, even on their own planet. _Neither did we. _She closed her eyes against the memory of Karl's scream. _God, I hope they're okay. _

The Nali standing at her left shoulder shifted imperceptibly closer, and, barely moving his lips, muttered one of his strange words to her. _It's no use, _she thought as he met his dull golden eyes and shook her head. _I don't understand a word you're saying. The translator's turned off. _Alexi had given her his universal translator for safekeeping before they had entered the Sunspire. It was priceless when they were in the Spire Village, where every word the Nali spoke was played back in somewhat garbled, though understandable, Russian. Likewise, all Kira or the other two had to do was to speak into the built-in microphone and play it back in the language of their choice, and they could communicate rather effectively with the four-armed aliens.

This means of communication, however, would surely cease once the monsters who had captured them found the square of metal in her flight suit pocket. She hoped to God that they wouldn't think it was a bomb, but anything could be used as an excuse to run her through. The thought turned her blood to ice, and she tried to slow her rapid breathing by inhaling through her nose. Her sinuses tingled at the rush of cold air. It was barely warmer in here than it was outside.

The guards that had escorted them into the room suddenly turned their attention to the door. Kira had barely registered their movement when the wooden gate swung open and a shadowed beast stepped into the room. Kira's knees buckled when she recognized it as being of the same species as the ones that kidnapped her here. Except this thing was a monster. Twice the size of the guards, and maybe half a foot taller than her original assailant. She felt bile rising in her throat. The creature turned to the sentinels and barked something at them as it took out an electronic screen from a side holster and started furiously tapping buttons on the screen. Once in a while it looked up, counting the number of prisoners in line, but otherwise it paid them no heed. The guards, in the meantime, began unsnapping the chains of every two prisoners, so that, while the line was broken, each prisoner had a partner chained to them by the throat.

_They're splitting us into sample-sized pieces, _Kira thought grimly. _Probably to feed to that ugly bastard over there._

The 'ugly bastard' looked up suddenly, and a spear of terror lanced through Kira's frame as he began walking towards her. Her knees quaking, she took a shuffling step backwards for every one of his forward strides, until she was blocked by the wall behind her. Mental images of her head bouncing along the floor after a well-aimed swipe from the alien's claws had her close to tears.

It was standing right in front of her now; Kira was surprised that the wooden floorboards didn't crack under its weight. It bent its neck and stooped down to her level, so that its dark-rimmed eyes bored into hers with quiet intensity. It took all of Kira's strength to keep her knees from buckling.

After the span of a few nervous breaths, the creature's back straightened and, with a final series of inputs into the electronic log, backed away from the line of captives. Turning its massive head over its shoulder, it opened its razored mouth and barked an order to the lesser guards. Spears were lifted and snarls ensued; one of the guards reached out and grasped the chain that connected her to the Nali and fairly dragged them out of the room. The Nali gave one last desperate cry to his fellow villagers before the dark hallway enveloped them both. Due to the difference in their heights and the shortness of the chain, Kira's collar had lodged itself under her jawbone, making it impossible for her to look down and see where she was going. However, she soon noticed that her boots were splashing through something soft and slimy, and the smell of the air had taken on a coppery tang. She held her breath as best as she could as they continued down the dark hall.

All too soon they began to slow down; the darkness was pierced by yellow lamplight as the guard led them into a large dual-level chamber. There was a large padlocked gate at the far end; off to Kira's left there was a bench and four chairs, all occupied by guards. Along one wall and on the second floor were plain wooden doors, windowless and without handles. Kira's stomach dropped. _It's a prison. _

The guard led them up the stairs to the last doorway and stood in front of it; barking down to one of his fellow prison-keepers, he waited until the latter got up from the bench and pulled the lever that unlocked that specific cell. As soon as the threshold was opened, he rammed the butt of the spear into the Nali's back. The Nali flinched inside, and Kira stumbled in after him.

The door was closed before she hit the ground. The Nali, dragged down by her dead weight, landed on his hands and knees next to her. The cell was dank and pitch black; Kira couldn't even see her own hand in front of her face—but she had an idea. Fumbling in her flight suit pocket, she breathed a sigh of relief as her fingers brushed across the smooth surface of the translator. Her hands shook as she felt around for the power key; she found it, pressed it, and whispered a quick prayer of thanks as the luminescent screen bathed the tiny cell with fresh green light. She cast a glance at the Nali's amazed face, and gave him a small smile of reassurance as his dull eyes questioned hers. She whispered into the translator and pressed the playback button. "It's all right; I've got friends coming to help me."

The Nali shook his head. He answered and the translator beeped the message back to her. "If they are not here, they are already dead."

The words sent a quake of dread through her, but she tried to brush the feeling away. What did this Nali know, anyway? He was just as clueless and as petrified as the rest of them. Instead, she spoke again, rather sharply, "I think perhaps we should keep this off and save the batteries. We don't know how long we'll be here, anyway."

That gunshot she heard—couldn't be—couldn't possibly be—and they both said that they'd get her if their trio was ever broken up. Didn't they?

_They're coming. They're going to come. They're going to rescue me. They're going to come. They're here, now, calling my name. All I have to do is listen. All I have to do is breathe. _

She flicked the power switch off, and, in the quiet darkness, fought against despair.

**Dark Arena**

He was holding on to the collar around her neck, the weight of his arm bending the metal into an oval shape. She wished that it would snap and strike her in the head so she wouldn't have to feel—_this—_again. He had mounted her from behind this time, forcing her upper body to the ground as her knees and shins trembled and jerked, struggling to support his weight. Her cheek was bleeding from being scraped against the wall. Thankfully, Norianna was out of her line of sight; she could only hope that her cellmate was ignoring the sounds. She was trying to keep silent as best she could, but Shas had buried the full length of the talons on his free hand into her torso and was yanking backwards on her body with each forward thrust, and she couldn't help but hiss in fury and pain.

None too soon there was the familiar bite of acid along her inner walls, the final humiliating thrum from the Skaarj behind her as he pulled out and kicked her body out of his way. She lay prone on the ground, panting for breath, as Shas slammed the door shut behind him.

The cell was quiet for a while, until Happy heard Norianna stirring somewhere off in the corner. A cool hand laid itself on her bruised forehead; she winced at the contact. "Hey, kiddo," Norianna whispered gently. "You all right?"

"Right as rain," Happy answered hoarsely, trying to push herself off of the floor with her forearms. Norianna, however, moved her hand to the small of Happy's back and pushed down. "Nah-ah-ah, don't you move. Jesus, I've never seen so much blood come out of such a little thing." She bit her thumbnail as Happy collapsed back onto the ground. Her eyes were drawn to the ragged marks on Happy's side. "Shit. These puncture wounds are ridiculous. How are we going to fix these?"

"We're not," Happy struggled for breath. "Now please. Keep your voice down."

Norianna cast a glance to the opposite corner of the cell. "You know, you don't look much better than our dead friend."

"Thank you. I realized that."

Norianna's voice betrayed her smile. "It's nice to see that you can still appreciate a sense of humor after you've had your vagina ripped open."

Happy coughed, and tasted blood. _It's so easy for you to laugh when it's not happening to you, isn't it?_ Her weak anger, however, dissipated when she felt Norianna running her fingertips back and forth over her shoulder blades. Her bruised body remembered the feeling and registered it in her mind. _Nice._

"I'm sorry I can't do anything more for you," Norianna said quietly, staring at the doorway. "How long have you been going through this?"

_Days. Months. Years._

"It started a long time ago. It's not as bad as it looks."

Norianna snorted. "You're lying to me." She moved her hand up to run her fingers through the matted clumps of her cellmate's hair. "I like the color of your hair," she remarked absently. Then she smiled. "Has Shas brought you a ribbon yet? You'd think he'd get you a present for being such a willing fuck."

The words stung until Norianna began to laugh. "Imagine," she squeaked out. "The bastard galumphing in here with a party bag full of ribbons. Oh, shit, that would be priceless."

Happy shifted her half-lidded eyes to the side. Norianna had clearly been mentally affected by the situation. "Norianna, please. Shut up."

Instead, Norianna got to her feet and stretched her lean body luxuriously. "What if I told you that I know a way to get out of here? Would you like me to keep talking then?"

_Out. _The word ignited a tiny spark of hope within Happy's consciousness; at the same time, the last memory that the word 'out' brought flashed into her mind, and she became angry. With a huge effort, she rolled onto her side and thrust her mutilated arm up for Norianna to see. "Do you see what 'out' got me? Do you see the result of my escape attempts? It's not going to work, Norianna, so don't bother. Hope doesn't exist here."

Norianna's eyes flashed with an unknown emotion. She lowered her body so that she was balanced delicately on the balls of her feet, and stared directly into Happy's face. "You're right," she said quietly, seriously. "It doesn't exist here." She gestured around the room. "But," she continued, "it exists here—" pressing her forefinger against Happy's forehead, "—and here—" pressing her finger to Happy's chest, "as long as you're living. You've just forgotten it, is all."

Happy didn't answer. Norianna stood up again. "You are human. You are strong and intelligent and you're still living. You're still alive, even after all this—do you think that you're still breathing because your body isn't as fucked up as it really is? You're living on hope! Because somewhere underneath all of that superficial stuff is a beautiful, free, _happy _human being, just waiting to be released. You're caged for now, yes, but your mind is telling you to just hold on, just a little longer, and you'll be triumphant over Shas and his band of bastards. Tell me I'm wrong, Happy. I dare you to tell me I'm wrong."

Happy met Norianna's gaze. The woman's blue eyes bored into her own. "But how?" she said brokenly.

"'How', what?"

Happy had to struggle to get the words around the lump that had formed in her throat. "How can I h-hope when all I can feel is—is—"

"It's not going to be easy all the time." Norianna interrupted her. "And you have to be realistic. We haven't been fed in three days, you just got raped, and there's a dead chick in the corner. But don't you see? We're at the very bottom—the only way to go is up!"

Norianna paused. Happy's gaze had drifted towards the doorway. "Yes, I know, you already tried the door technique. Ah—er, Happy?"

Happy's body had stiffened; she seemed to shrink into herself, trying to make herself a small a target as possible. The door to their cell was thrown open forcefully; before Norianna could register the sound she felt a hand grab the collar of her flight suit and fairly lift her off of the ground and toss her into the opposite wall. She collided with the half-decomposed woman and had to bite back a shriek of disgust as her foot sank into the girl's rotted flesh when she tried to right herself. In an instant, though, her attention was riveted on the action in front of her.

It was Shas. He reached down and wrapped his hand around Happy's collar, lifting her into the air to his eye level. Happy's hand came up involuntarily to grasp her assailant's wrist; with a snarl, Shas drew back his arm and slammed his captive into the wall. The prisoner's mouth twisted in a breathless cry for help; her eyes met Norianna's, but failed to register any recognition.

Shas glanced over his shoulder at Norianna and turned to exit the cell. He was met in the doorway by another Skaarj, who reached out and grasped Happy's handless wrist. He seemed to consider it for a second before Shas brushed past and pulled the gate shut behind him. Norianna rushed towards the door and beat her fist against the lock. "Bring her back, you fuckers! Don't you dare kill her!"

She could hear their footfalls travelling down the hallway; a door opened and illuminated the corridor as the two Skaarj dragged Happy into a room adjacent to the cell block. Norianna waited, breathless, and when the first familiar, desperate screams rang out, sank to her knees and covered her ears with her hands.

The noises did not stop for a long time.


	6. Changes

A.N. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Six: Changes

"I wish I had a mirror."

Ash looked up from the spitted squid that rested over the low fire he had built by the water's edge. It was his first catch without Myscha's help—he had long since used the translator to learn the Nali's name—and he was nervous about it being snatched away by birds or one of the Manta that inhabited the cave behind their little hut. The smells the cooking squid was emitting were a bit fishy, but Ash was hungry enough not to complain. "What?"

849 stood in the shallows of the riverbank, naked to the waist, the torso and sleeves of her one-pieced prisoner's uniform floating on the water's surface behind her like gray fins. Her spine and ribs were still clearly visible through her skin, but she was slowly putting on weight and gaining health. Her cheeks had filled out and her eyes had regained their brilliance. She smiled easily and laughed often, and Ash had to admit, she was a far cry from the dangerous prisoner that her identification profile had labeled her to be. She seemed like an entirely different person from the furious woman who had accused him of her demise. _But still…._

"I never thought that you cared much for your looks," Ash said absently, rotating the stick that the squid was impaled on. 849 turned towards the prison guard, scooping up a handful of water and rubbing it over her shoulders. Her skin sparkled in the early morning sunlight. She regarded him with a pout. "My hair's growing out; I've forgotten what it looks like."

Ash stuck his lower lip out. The squid had been blackened on one side. "It's brown."

"No shit, Sherlock," 849 huffed. "Now stop fucking around with that squid. I think it's done by now. It doesn't take long for those to cook through."

Ash pulled one off one the squid's tentacles and pinched it between his fingers. "It feels kind of…tough," he admitted. 849 crossed her arms and waited with a small smile as Ash tentatively put the squid into his mouth. After a few chews he made a face.

"It's staying in one piece," he said. "I can't chew it."

"Dumbass," 849 turned her back to him, massaging the back of her neck. The sunshine beating down on the wet fuzz of her head gave her a dark halo. She heard Ash sigh in frustration as he picked the impaled squid off of the spit.

"I'm going to go see if Myscha knows how to make this taste better," he muttered under his breath. 849 watched him leave out of the corner of her eye. The poor guy was hopeless at cooking. Even _she _was able to prepare a dish or two of the native food on her own.

"He's going to throw it out and catch a new one for you," 849 called over her shoulder. "You know that, don't you?" Ash didn't answer. 849 snapped her fingers and held her hand out. "Give it here. Let me see how it is."

Ash looked at her mistrustfully. "You're not going to eat the whole thing, are you?"

The prisoner rolled her eyes. "Ah, no. I'm not going to eat your rubber fish; now will you give it to me?"

Ash handed her the dead animal and watched as she turned it over and over in her hands. She lifted it to her face and took a few tentative sniffs before sticking her lower lip out.

"Yeah," she said, holding the squid out to Ash. "Totally not going to eat it." Without warning she pivoted on her heel in the water and lobbed both the stick and the squid out towards the middle of the river. It soared through the air like a white wingless bird before it was caught by the waves with a barely audible splash. She turned back to the prison guard, who stood looking there with an expression on his face that looked as if he was trying suppress a shout and hold in tears at the same time.

"You cooked it too long," 849 said matter-of-factly, brushing her palms together. "Catch another one and try again." With a flashing smile, she turned back to watch the water rush by—

—only to feel herself being seized by the waist and shoulder and hauled above Ash's head. She cried out in surprise and tried to hit him to get him to put her down, but his head was out of her reach. She dimly heard him laughing over the rushing water.

"Ash! Put me down! This isn't funny!"

He had carried her out until he was waist-deep in the river; at her frantic request to get him to put her down, he joyfully gathered his strength and pitched her body into the deep water, making sure to submerge her head in a position so that the water had a better chance of running into her nose. He danced away from her as soon as he had completed the task; none too soon, because she righted herself and was snorting water out from her sinuses. "What was that for?" she demanded when she finished coughing.

"You threw my breakfast away!"

"And I'm going to throw a _rock _at you when I can find one!" 849 shot back, although she was laughing. "I wasn't going to let you eat that piece of garbage!"

Ash still wasn't fully out of the water. He folded his arms across his chest and scowled at her. "Well, it wasn't yours to throw away. You could have told me politely like a normal human being that the food wasn't fit to eat. But no, instead you had to be a bitch."

"What were you going to do? Give it a funeral?" 849 suddenly leapt forwards and caught Ash by the lower leg. With a mighty yank, she succeeded in toppling the man onto his back in the shallows. She triumphantly splashed up to his side and put her foot on his stomach. "And besides, is that any way to treat a lady?"

Ash burst out into laughter. "I would treat you like a lady if you acted like one, 849. And what kind of lady walks around in public with her tits hanging out, eh?"

849 put her hands on her hips. "You and Myscha don't count as 'public', and besides, since when did you ever complain about being flashed? You haven't gotten laid since we left Earth."

"Are you offering to change that little detail?"

849 opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it and instead shrugged herself back into her jumpsuit. "I'm going back into the cabin to tell Myscha that he has to feed you again," she said, pulling the zipper up towards her neck. As she sloshed out of the water, she was stopped by Ash's voice.

"I do think you're pretty, you know."

She turned her head. Ash was sitting up in the shallows, his hands on his knees, with a brilliant smile on his dark face. She had to duck her head to hide her smile.

"And I think you're a dickweed who can't cook."

Myscha was sleeping when 849 entered the cabin. Very quietly so as not to disturb him, she doffed her entire jumpsuit and threw it over the fireplace mantle to dry. She stood there naked, then, looking down at her Nali companion, a skinny lump under a straw mat; one of his legs and two of his arms were sticking out comically from his coverings. She pulled a low chair over from the table and sat in front of the fireplace, putting her knees on her chin, quietly studying the Nali with a pensive look on her face._ I wonder why he's so trusting of us. Especially me, after what I did to him on that first day. Has he encountered humans before?_

—_Or are we the only—_

There was the sound of shuffling outside; her reverie was interrupted. She turned halfway around in her seat, only to be surprised by the door bursting open and Ash stumbling into the room.

"Where's the fire?" she demanded. "Look, you woke Myscha up, poor thing." She put a reassuring hand on the Nali's shoulder; he had jerked into a sitting position, his yellow eyes wide with fear. "Don't worry, Ash is just being a dumbass."

"Where's my Enforcer?" Ash panted. Without bothering to wait for an answer he rushed towards the ladder that led to the attic. "849,do you know how to shoot?—of course you do, what am I saying? Come up here and help me look for them. Myscha put them somewhere—"

"…Ash?" 849 stood up and walked warily towards the ladder. "What's going on?"

The prison guard poked his head down from the darkness of the attic. "Would you get dressed?" he hissed at her. He tossed a handful of ammunition clips at her; she ducked out of the way as they bounced off the ladder rungs.

"Watch it—you almost hit me with those!"

"Get out of the way and get some fucking clothes on, then!" Ash swung down into the room, carrying an Enforcer in each hand. Something round bulged out of his coat pocket.

"Is that a grenade?" 849 asked incredulously. "Where did you--?"

Ash thrust an Enforcer into her limp fingers. "No time to explain. There's a Brute scouting around out there, and if he finds us in this cabin then we're fucked. We're going to have to kill him."

"A _what?_"

"Would you get dressed, please—or do I have to do it for you?" Ash hissed, cutting a furious glance in her direction as he loaded a clip into his Enforcer. 849 hurriedly stepped back into her flight suit. It was still uncomfortably damp, but she didn't dare complain. Her pulse fluttered, panicked, in her throat. As soon as she was ready, Ash tossed a clip in her direction.

"We have a pretty good chance of beating this thing if we stay hidden," Ash said as 849 loaded the Enforcer with trembling hands. "Their eyesight is terrible."

849 swallowed heavily. Her face had blanched.

Ash looked at her for a moment, then reached out and chucked her underneath her chin. "Hey," he said solemnly. "Nothing's going to happen, okay? This is just a minor thing. No sweat."

He opened the door cautiously, and without looking back, motioned for 849 to follow him out the door. She looked at Myscha, who hadn't moved from his cot and was looking at them expectantly. "Stay here," she whispered.

Once she closed the door behind her, she felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. Part of her wanted to listen for the steady beat of a Manta's wings—

"Psst! Here!"

Ash was crouching by the cliff wall, his gray suit blending in with the slate behind him. She hurried over, keeping her eyes glued to the empty field off to her right. There was only one place the Brute could've come from. During one of her tentative explorations of her new home she had wandered to the opposite end of their swath of land and had discovered a ledge, about nine feet high, upon which a broad wooden plank was propped. She had screwed up the courage to climb up the board, and, peering over the lip of the ledge, saw that there was an entryway to some sort of facility built into the side of the mountain. A sign above the open threshold glowed angry and foreign; it was from that entrance that Ash's unconscious body had been found. It was only a matter of time, Myscha had told them, before Ash's assailants would track him here.

"There's only one," Ash said quietly, edging forwards. "But he's got two handheld rocket launchers, so whatever you do, don't get spotted."

There. Almost exactly where they had been bathing not ten minutes before; she could still see the small fire that Ash had built to cook his ridiculous squid. The "Brute" was standing near the bank; it was looking over both of its hulking shoulders, back in the direction from where it came. From time to time it shuffled its foot in the mud. It looked to be seven feet tall, at least, but the breadth of its shoulders and chest gave it a much more intimidating figure. The rocket launchers in its massive hands were almost laughably small, but 849 didn't want to write them off as being 'harmless'. Its skin was a chalky brown, rough-looking, and other than a pair of leather shoulderpads, it lacked any sort of armor.

"Okay," Ash said. "I guess we should hit it before it gets any closer to the hut. Are you ready?"

849's hands were trembling so badly that she could barely keep a grip on the slippery metal of her Enforcer. Ash clenched his jaw. "Are you going to make me do all the work?" he snapped impatiently. "I mean, were you this nervous when you killed the New Earth Prime Minister?"

849 locked eyes with the prison guard. Her lips worked, as if she wanted to say something, but instead she made a strangled noise and swung her arm around so that the barrel of her gun pointed directly at the Brute. Ash made a desperate move to stop her, but her finger pulled back on the trigger and a bullet cut its way through the crisp air, right past the Brute, and disappeared into the river.

"You _idiot!" _Ash grabbed 849's arm and gave it a savage twist. "You didn't aim! And now it knows—"

There was a low snarl from the creature on the riverbank. It had turned slowly, and was now facing them with its arms raised. Ash barely had time to mutter, "Oh, fuck," before the Brute had taken aim and fired.

"Go. Move!" The guard shoved 849 to the side and backpedaled out of the way as the arm-length rocket smashed into the canyon wall and detonated, sending red-hot shards of flak scattering in all directions. One of them ricocheted off of the ground by 849's foot and struck the back of her hand. She gritted her teeth, clutching her arm as the brand of pain made its way up into her elbow.

Ash was strafing left, firing steadily at the Brute, whose roars were becoming deafening. She could see that Ash's bullets were hitting their marks; the alien's face streamed with red rivulets of blood. Deciding that she didn't want to leave the prison guard to fend for himself, she raised her arm once more, bracing her elbow with her wounded hand. Thanks to Ash's movement, the Brute wasn't likely to notice her immediately. She was bound to hit it at least once.

She fired. Once, twice, three times; the Enforcer bucked strangely in her hand; she had fallen out of practice. Odd, because it had only been a month since she had last fired it.

Thankfully, the bullets hit their mark. Not so thankfully that the Brute hadn't forgotten where she was, and as soon as she had finished shooting, he lifted his arm and fired a neat round of three rockets straight for her. She yelped and turned tail, hearing Ash shouting at her but not distinguishing his words. The first rocket flew off to her left and detonated into the ground, spraying her with clods of dirt. The second shrieked over her head; the blast it created as it detonated into the canyon wall knocked her to the ground, scalding her with a wave of blistering heat. Stunned, she could only stare blankly in front of her as the Brute began stomping towards her.

_Move, move! _She tried to coax herself into a standing position, but her quivering arms wouldn't support her weight. The ground vibrated slightly as the creature drew closer; she heard a metallic snap as he reloaded his rocket launcher. She squeezed her eyes shut and saw, in blurry black and white, the swooping Manta diving towards her, its scales catching the light of the sun and dazzling her eyes—_I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die—_

"849! Cover your head!"

Ash's command cut through her hazy mind, and she curled instinctively into a ball and tucked her chin to her chest. There was a dull _thump _and then a huge explosion behind her; she was suddenly splattered with something wet and warm and slimy. She opened her eyes and saw that her arm was dripping with red liquid. _Blood?_

Tentatively she sat up, wincing as she saw the chunk of metal that was embedded into the back of her hand. She turned her head over her shoulder and was met with the sight of the Brute, flat on its stomach, lying not two feet away from her with a huge gaping hole in its back where its spine should have been. Bits of its flesh and muscle clung to 849's flight suit, staining it red. _Ash must've thrown the grenade. _

Ash limped towards her; he had a nasty gash on his upper thigh. He was panting heavily, but when he saw her he tossed his Enforcer down and somehow found the breath to start shouting at her.

"God damn it, you stupid, stupid woman! This would have gone well if you hadn't have been so God damn reckless! Why the fuck did you fire at him without aiming?"

She glared back, and, finding that she couldn't trust herself to stand because of her trembling legs, aimed her Enforcer at him. "Don't say another fucking word," she snapped, "or I'll blow your fucking brain out. How DARE you bring my crime into this? Do you think I meant for this to happen? Do you think I wanted to end up on this fucking rock, stuck here in the middle of nowhere, with YOU? I had a home—I had a family—and I'll be damned if you think I wanted to be taken away from them. I wasn't sorry when I killed that rich bastard and I won't be sorry if I end up killing you, too."

"Well that's just great," Ash threw his hands up in the air. "You know, I actually thought that maybe you'd have grown a fucking conscience during all that time you spent on the _Vortex Rikers. _It wasn't a fucking joy ride, you know. You're just sorry that you got put there in the first place. Hell, you'd probably be _happy _to have been placed in the Tournament instead of getting this sentence. You apparently seem to LIKE killing people!"

849 clenched her teeth and tried to pull the trigger; Ash saw the muscle in her arm move and leapt forwards, kicking 849's raised arm and sending the Enforcer spinning into the air. "I just saved your sorry ass and that's how you're going to thank me?" he said shortly. "I should have let the bastard have at you."

"You threw a fucking grenade when he was right next to me! For all I know, you wanted me to die along with it!"

The two Terrans held each other's gaze; the air around them crackled with intensity. Then Ash made a disgusted sound and turned around, stalking towards the cabin. "Fuck it all."

849 watched him leave. Only when he slammed the cabin door behind him did she stagger to her feet and make her uncertain way towards the riverbank. She splashed into the shallows, and suddenly collapsed to her hands and knees. The water around her turned light pink.

Drops of water splashed up into her face and eyes, but she didn't blink. Her mind had shut down. Her ears were dulled to the extraneous sounds around her; she was trying desperately to listen for _that Manta; it's hiding, it'll come out and kill you if you aren't careful—!_

She remained on all fours in the river until the sun dropped down behind the canyon wall and the sky darkened to a rich purple; it was then when Myscha came outside and carried her back into the cabin. They put her on a cot in front of the fire; Ash tried to call her back to consciousness as Myscha worked on getting the shrapnel out of her hand. It took all night to bring her back to reality and convince her that she was no longer fighting the flying creature.

By the next morning, the Brute carcass had been consumed by the predatory birds that nested in the _Vortex Rikers, _high above them.

_**The Dark Arena**_

Norianna, curled on her side and facing the wall, fought to keep the rations she had just eaten from coming back out of her mouth. She seriously doubted that what they fed the prisoners here actually counted as 'food', but it was better than entertaining thoughts of eating bits off of the dead Terran that still hadn't been removed from her cell. Since Happy had been taken away three days ago, the cell block had been eerily quiet.

_Speak of the devil. _Someone was coming.

Her body stiffened involuntarily as the door shrieked on its hinges as it opened. There was a heavy thud behind her, and the door closed—again. _God damn it._

She was afraid to turn around, at first. Part of her wanted to believe that it was another body, another dead stranger to keep her company in the festering cell, but she knew better. The thing that had hit the concrete floor was a person she knew. She couldn't lie to herself. She would turn around, and either be greeted by the mangled corpse of her cellmate, or Happy would just be unconscious.

She sat up and took a deep breath through her nostrils. Happy it was, and she didn't look very alive, but she wasn't gutted. Her body was still intact, save for—

"What the hell?"

Happy's left arm, the one that was missing a hand, had been given a prosthetic extension, but it certainly didn't look like the Skaarj did it out of compassion. As far as Norianna could tell, the Skaarj had cut her arm between her elbow and her wrist, severing straight through, and then had inserted a metal pole into the fresh wound. Branching off from this pole was a system of wires and thin iron spokes that culminated at a ball-and-socket wrist joint, which led to a crude imitation of a metal hand with one finger and one thumb. Perhaps they had soldered the metal to the bone, she couldn't tell; all she knew was that the skin around the metal pole had turned yellow-green and was oozing blood, and it must have hurt like hell.

"Happy?"

The girl didn't move. Norianna bit her bottom lip and reached out, shaking Happy's shoulder; her cellmate's head lolled to the side. Tentatively, holding her breath, Norianna moved her hand so that her slim fingers rested against Happy's throat, checking for a pulse. She fully expected her to be dead.

"Oh?" Norianna leaned forward. "So you are alive."

Happy's eyes had opened. She seemed disoriented at first, but when she saw Norianna, seemed to come back to reality. She blinked a few times and sat up straighter.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," Norianna said cheerfully. "You had me worried there for a moment."

Happy dropped her chin to her chest. Norianna sat back and her heels and rested her hand on Happy's head. "I was thinking that you had gotten a free ticket outta here," she said. "I would've been very lonely without somebody to pick on. Our dead friend isn't very receptive to my jokes."

Happy's shoulders had started to shake. Norianna paused and brushed Happy's hair away from her face, trying to get a look at her expression. "Hey, chickie? What's wrong?"

Happy lifted her head. Her brown eyes were bloodshot and filled to the brim with tears, which had begun to course down her face, leaving clean streaks in the grime that covered her skin. Her chin had crumpled, and she was struggling to contain sobs. Norianna smiled sympathetically.

"Oh, dear. I upset you with my corny sense of humor. Cheer up, yeah?"

Happy's breath caught on a sob, and in a second the floodgates burst open. She dissolved into hysterics, falling forwards into Norianna's lap, her hand clutching at Norianna's flight suit as her prosthetic 'arm' scraped the ground. Norianna, at a loss, placed her hands on Happy's heaving shoulders. It was the first time that she had ever seen the girl cry. She didn't know how to deal with it.

"Shhhh, shhhhh—be strong. Come on, buck up. It's not as bad as it seems."

Happy wailed something into Norianna's thighs. The older girl gently placed her hands on either side of Happy's head and gently lifted her into an upright position. "I can't understand you when you're talking into my crotch, dear," she said, grinning slightly.

Happy's face was a reddened mess. She lifted her good arm to wipe her nose. "I was af-afraid," she hiccupped. "I was afraid that I was go-going to die. They took me in there—" her voice was becoming more strained as she fought against the lump in her throat—"and they c-cut my arm off, just like that, right in front of my eyes, and then it was gone—and the pain, Norianna. Why would they do this to me?" She put her hand over her mouth, but it barely muffled her renewed cries of grief. "I didn't want—I didn't want—"

Norianna paused for a moment, and then drew Happy against her, putting her chin on top of the girl's head. "You've held it in long enough, Happy. I want you to cry, now. Don't be afraid of making noise. I won't let them hurt you again."

She couldn't bring herself to believe in her own words, and although Happy didn't say anything, Norianna knew that she didn't, either. But somehow, for now, it was all right. For now, Happy could empty her conscience of all of the grief and pain she had bottled up inside. She had to do it now, while they were both alive.


	7. Cosmic Castaway

Thanks for reading.

Chapter Seven: Cosmic Castaway

Kira squinted her eyes against the light as she and her cellmate—Kriin—were led out of their quarters for the morning prisoner head count. She had a terrible headache, and while she wasn't exactly protesting being brought out of her dark cage, the harsh sunbeams slanting through the narrow windows fostered her growing migraine. She hoped the count would be quick; today was also one of the three days of the week where the prisoners were fed. She didn't bother asking what was in the stuff that the Krall guards were feeding them; all she knew was that, after a week of eating it, she had ceased to throw up and could actually garner energy from it.

After being roughly pushed down the stairs and shoved into position with the other twenty or so Nali captives, she stood there shivering as the Krall went down the line and checked the numbers on the prisoners' collars with the electronic logbooks they held. Kira figured it would be easier to just count however many prisoners there were, but then again, that would be too quick for Krall liking. She had developed a particular disdain for these creatures, moreso than their masters, the Skaarj. A more two-faced breed, she thought, could not be in existence. They bullied and beat the Nali on a daily basis, lording over the four-armed innocents, and yet when their Skaarj captains visited the cell block they practically fell on their faces in their efforts to please.

A Nali down the line yelped and collapsed to the floor; a Krall guard had struck his head and was now barking something at the cowering alien. Kira clenched her hands. She didn't understand the guard's words but it was probably something obscene.

A Krall appeared before her and clenched his claws around her neck, roughly lifting her chin so he could see the number on the metal collar on her neck. Kira held her breath, staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling, willing herself to be calm. After a pause, he withdrew his hand and moved down the line.

Kira sighed and shuffled her feet. God, she was hungry. She cast a glance at the Nali beside her. They were doing an excellent job of hiding their hunger pangs. She blinked and leaned forward a little.

_What are they doing?_

Kriin, who stood about two spaces down from where she was, had his head turned to the side and was moving his lips—just barely, but it was _talking, _and talking was forbidden in the presence of the Krall. Not only that, but he was making contact with the Nali he was talking to; one of his left hands was clasped around the other Nali's right. His eyes seemed to be misted over with—was he _crying_?

_Stop that, _she wanted to hiss. _They'll see you and they'll kill you! _

Suddenly, Kriin and his companion turned their heads and stared directly at her. Kira shook her head and mouthed the word 'no'. Kriin's eyes suddenly lost their teary sparkle; he set his mouth and gave a brisk nod to the Nali beside him.

And they ran.

At the first sign of movement in the ranks, the two Krall guards spun around. Seeing that two of their prisoners were making a beeline for the ramp that led to the main doors, they both snarled in fury and gave chase. Kira's heart was in her throat. What were Kriin and his companion _thinking? _Even if they managed to escape the cell block, they were running directly into the hands of the countless guards the patrolled Bluff Eversmoking's corridors. It was suicide!

When the two escaping Nali and the guards disappeared up the ramp, the Nali standing next to Kira suddenly broke from the line and dashed forwards, into the low pool of water that rested underneath the stairs. He turned around briefly and said something hopeful to his companions before he disappeared with a soft splash behind a pillar.

None of the other Nali tried to escape. Kira shivered from the tension in the room. They all waited in breathless silence until—

There. One scream. Cut short. Kira's heart surged into her throat. _Please let their deaths be quick._

But the Krall were not that merciful. The Skaarj, even less so. Seconds after the scream, three sets of heavy footsteps approached the cell block. The first two to come down the ramp were the Krall guards.

Directly behind them was a Skaarj. In one of his massive hands he clutched a Nali by the torso, his fingers almost completely encircling the alien's waist. It was Kriin.

_No._

The Krall skittered out of the Skaarj's way as the huge beast made his way down the ramp. The group of prisoner Nali reflexively broke their line and huddled together, crouching down on their knees, staring up at the Skaarj with terror-stricken faces. Kira couldn't move even if she wanted to; terror rooted her to the spot. The creature was absolutely gigantic. It was the first time she had seen a Skaarj up close; he towered over the Krall guards by at least a foot and a half. She wondered how the floor didn't crack beneath his weight.

The Skaarj threw Kriin down onto the floor like a rag doll, he didn't try to get up. Mistake. The Skaarj chambered his leg and kicked Kriin in the ribs, barking an order to him. Kira heard the distinct cracking of bones. Kriin, in vain, tried to stand, but only managed to raise himself into a kneeling position. His breath came in heavy pants.

The Skaarj then began pacing in front of the prisoners. He didn't bother talking; he didn't have to. The authority he exuded and the terror he represented was enough to command everyone's attention. Kira couldn't take her eyes off of him. She expected him to begin slaughtering the prisoners any second.

Kriin coughed hollowly. Kira's heart nearly broke. _Why did you run?_

After a few more paces, the Skaarj stopped in front of Kriin's crippled body. The Nali lifted his head and stared into his assailant's eyes. His lips moved; Kira didn't hear what he said, but she knew it was the last thing that he ever would say. The Skaarj's face twisted with rage; his arm came forwards and a pair of razor-sharp blades extended from underneath the scales on his wrist. With one swipe, two of Kriin's arms detached from his torso and fell to the floor. With another, he was rendered armless.

Kira couldn't watch. She closed her eyes, fighting against nausea as the sound of her cellmate being dismembered echoed through the chamber. Eventually, the Skaarj barked an order to the two Krall guards. Kira's shoulder was roughly grabbed, and she and the other prisoners were escorted back to their cells.

When her cell door closed, Kira collapsed in a shivering heap on the concrete floor. She wanted to mourn the loss of her companion, but the only thing that was running through her veins was relief. She hadn't been killed. She was still alive, and she felt disgusted with herself for cherishing life as it was now.

"I'm a coward if there ever was one," she whispered, if only to hear her own voice. "Why did you do it, Kriin?"

Her head pounding, she closed her eyes to sleep. She didn't bother waiting for food. There wasn't going to be any today.

* * *

Someone was shaking her shoulder.

At first, she thought it was a dream, and her sleepy self simply shrugged the persistent hand away. "Leave me alone, Alexi," she mumbled. "Can't you see that…I'm sleeping?"

The hand came back, rougher this time, along with a half-whispered plea. "Ba'ti d'vaar!"

She jerked awake and sat up almost simultaneously. A Nali was in her cell? "…Kriin?"

The cell was dark, but somehow it seemed less gloomy than before—and she felt a breeze. A cold breeze. A _fresh _breeze. She sensed that someone was crouching directly in front of her, and she put her hand out; her fingers bumped into a sinewy arm. "Kriin? Is that you?"

Her translator beeped as the Nali answered her. She fumbled around in her flight suit pocked for the machine and squinted at the green lettering on the screen. "Not Kriin," she read; her heart fell. "Kruun. Kriin is my brother, and he is dead."

So it wasn't a dream. "What are you doing here?" she asked; the translator relayed her message.

"I am here to take you to safety."

She peered at the Nali before her. "How?"

The Nali shifted and she saw him lift his arm and point behind him. "I dug through the wall to get to you. We can make it if you come with me now."

"Didn't anybody see you?" She was having trouble believing this was happening.

"No. Please hurry."

His fingers grasped hers. He began pulling her with him; she only hesitated a moment before following him. She supposed that it wasn't the smartest idea to have built the cells into the side of an earthen hill, but she was certainly thankful that it had been so easy for the Nali to dig through all of that just to get to her. The cell walls weren't exactly dirt, though; she supposed that the Nali used some sort of small charge to knock the concrete loose. The creatures were smarter than they looked.

"Are you coming back for the others?" she asked as she followed him through the cramped tunnel.

"No," he said quickly.

She stalled. "Why not?" Surely he had friends in the cells—they were his own people, after all.

"Because you're going to save us."

She wanted to ask more questions, but the tunnel suddenly dumped them out into a circular corridor that was filled with ankle-deep sludge. _The sewage system, probably, _she thought disgustedly, _but I suppose it could be worse. _

"Now listen closely," the Nali whispered to her as they wound through the passageway. She read quickly along as the translator flashed Kruun's hushed orders. "I can take you as far as the lift that connects the monastery to the bell tower on an island in the lake. Once you're in the bell tower, hide there until nightfall. There's a shipping car that will take you from the bell tower to the entrance to Dasa Pass on the other side of the mountain. There are Nali there, Nali that know of your presence and are waiting to help you."

"But why are you doing all this to save me?" Kira asked breathlessly. Kruun, for the first time, paused in his flight and turned around to face her.

"For the same reason that Kriin and Jaara ran a suicide run to distract the guards so I could get to the underwater passages. For the same reason that I'm not going back to help my friends in prison. We Nali will do anything to protect you."

He grabbed her wrist again and picked up his pace. There was a ladder on the wall up ahead, and Kruun began pulling himself up the rungs. Kira followed, in a daze.

_They died…for me?_

The ladder led up to a grate, which the Nali pushed aside with relative ease. They had arrived in a well-lit stone hallway; empty at the moment, but Kruun was not taking any chances. "Be very quiet," he warned as he dragged her behind him. Kira nodded and picked up the pace. The rounded a corner and dashed up a ramp.

"The lift is right in front of us—oh, no."

Kruun stopped in his tracks; Kira nearly ran into him. Instinctively Kruun pushed her behind him and hissed, "When I say 'run', you _run." _

Kira peeked out from underneath the Nali's elbow. Standing on the ramp was a Skaarj, and he was staring right at them.

"What's going to happen to us?" she whispered hoarsely. Kruun tensed.

"Nothing is going to happen to you."

The Skaarj stalked down the ramp, clenching and unclenching his fists. He rattled at them; a deep, throaty growl whose feral undertone could not be denied. He was going to kill these two escapees. When they were five feet apart, the Skaarj stopped.

And lunged.

Kruun shoved Kira out of the way and jumped forwards, meeting the Skaarj hand-to-hand. The Skaarj's wristblades shone in the dim lamplight as he struggled to get out of the Nali's grip on his wrists, but Kruun was not letting go. Digging his heels into the ground, the Nali drove the Skaarj backwards into a wall; his second set of arms came up and pushed the Skaarj's head back; he was trying to break his neck.

"Run!" Kruun shouted over his shoulder. "Get out of here!"

"What about you?" Kira cried. "You don't need to die for me—we can get out of here together!"

The translator's message was almost lost amidst the snarls and barks of the Skaarj warrior, but Kruun, struggling to keep his enemy pinned against the wall, panted, "I'll come find you after this—so please, run!"

Kira turned on her heel and bolted the rest of the way out of the ramp, trying to block out the sounds of the fight behind her. He was risking his life to save her—two other Nali had _died _for her—but what for? What could she possibly do for them?

_Save _them? Was he kidding her?

She dashed onto the lift, kicking the lever that activated it and looking worriedly back at the corridor that she had just come from. Was he still alive?

The lift carried her up and away from the monastery; the metal creaked so much that she was worried it was going to dissolve under her feet. Her destination—a bell tower, was it?—loomed in the distance. It was at least fifty stories tall, made of polished gray rock, and it jutted into the purple sky, cutting a harsh outline in the horizon. She hoped to God there weren't any Skaarj to worry about once she got there.

The lift creaked to a halt at the base of the bell tower; she stepped out cautiously onto dry ground. Being out in the open, under the huge sky, was such a foreign feeling, even after only a week or so of imprisonment. It made her feel open, vulnerable. She hurried towards the bell tower and slipped inside.

The inside of the tower was dark, but enough of daylight remained so that she could make out the delineation of a staircase and a table on the opposite side of the room. A single candle burned on its surface. Kira approached the table slowly. Aside from the candle, a journal of some sort was propped open; the pages were filled with scratchy, hurried characters. Kira pulled out her translator and held it over the open page. The scanning eye on the back of the translator skimmed its red beam over the page and relayed the Russian translation onto the screen.

"I sit here," Kira read quietly, "and pray that the sky demons will evacuate the monastery, and day after day I am disappointed. I feel so ashamed that our Messiah has arrived and was greeted, not with feasting and praise, but with hostility. I fear even now that the sky demons have destroyed our Messiah as a warning to my people. However, I must cling to the prophet's words: _have faith and never sway from your beliefs. Only a soul that keeps the faith despite all oppression shall triumph when the savior princess comes from the stars._"

A cold chill whispered up Kira's spine. "Savior…princess?"

_Because you're going to save us._

"Oh my God," Kira put her hand to her forehead. "They think _I'm _their messiah?"

A light wind cut through the open windows above her and the sound of fluttering cloth caught her ear. Looking up, she saw a huge tapestry, at least two stories tall, that took up about half of the circle of the entire base of the bell tower. The background was stitched with dark thread, but she could make out the form of some sort of mountain range, over which dark storm clouds churned. In the foreground, a Nali, stitched with earthen tones, bowed before a figure seated on a golden throne. Kira narrowed her eyes. The seated figure was bent over the Nali, cupping its hands around the Nali's head in a surprisingly maternal gesture, but there was something different about its shape that made Kira do a double-take. While the Nali was brown, with a flat face and gold eyes, the one in the throne was blue-skinned, with a distinct nose and pouty red lips; a pair of bluish wings bloomed out of its back. It had four pairs of arms like the Nali, but aside from that fact, the winged figure looked _human_ in shape.

Had there been humans on this planet…before?

Outside, there was a harsh squeal of metal. _Someone's activated the lift? _Slightly panicked, she grabbed the candle off of the table. After a slight pause, she grabbed the journal and stuffed it into her pocket along with the translator. _It won't do to have them finding out about this whole 'messiah' business, _she thought as she began ascending the winding stone staircase.

She kept a sharp ear out for the sounds of the lift. Hopefully, if she hurried, fifty flights of stairs wouldn't take too long to ascend.

"There better be some hiding places up there," she panted.

* * *

Bharuk massaged the back of his neck with one hand, examining the wrist blades of his opposite wrist. _Fucking Nali zar'chi, _he thought irritably, noticing a bit of flesh that still clung to the inside of the weapon. _I wonder why we put up with them so much in the first place. _

Four escapees. _Four. _Three Nali and that irritating Terran bitch that had stood there staring at him as he ripped apart one of the four-armed slaves. If this kept up, he'd have to resort to crucifying the whole lot. They weren't serving any purpose, anyway.

And now that Terran had run off and _he _had to hunt her down. It wouldn't do to have escaped prisoners making a scene in other parts of the country about how they escaped the infamous Bluff Prison. Besides, this particular Terran bitch was the Nali's supposed messiah. He had wanted to use her status to command even more respect from the Nali, but it couldn't be helped now that she had gone and run away. She could not be spared.

It was a good thing that she had holed herself in the bell tower. She'd done his work for him. All he had to do was follow her straight up.

* * *

Gasping, Kira finally, _finally, _collapsed on the top floor of the tower. The room was open on all sides, with a thin stone railing protecting her from a fifty-story fall. She could clearly see the entire valley from this vantage point; the lake, whipped into white froth by the wind; jutting up from the water was her previous prison, and off in the distance was, she supposed, the Pass that Kruun had been talking about.

She breathed in deeply, trying to get her breath back. The air smelled like woodsmoke and pine; a familiar scent that brought back a memory of Earth so poignant that she actually had to blink tears out of her eyes. Well, she was here, where she was told to go. Now all she had to do was sit and wait. She picked a seat near a stone pillar and slid down into a sitting position, putting her candle between her knees and casting another glance around at her hiding place. The bell above her swung lazily in the breeze, its engraved, mirror-like surface catching the light and throwing it onto the ceiling.

After a short pause, Kira pulled out her translator and pressed the record button. "Science Officer Kira Argmanov," she said wearily. "Separated from my crewmates from ISV-KRAN, I've only been able to stay alive by holding up in this bell tower. A native Nali helped me escape from the prison cell the Skaarj put me in. Hopefully the Skaarj won't find me here. I've decided that I should log the rest of my trip from here on out.

"So they think I'm a warrior princess. Funny, I was always the chicken of the group. Alexi and Karl's group, I mean. It's been a week and a half, and," her voice caught on a short sob, but she checked it, "I don't think they're coming. But I've got friends, it seems, in the Nali. Two of them even died for me. I suppose I should return the favor by playing the part of 'messiah' for them. Right now I'm waiting for, um…Kruun, is that it? I'm waiting for Kruun to come, and we'll get to Dasa Pass. From there, I don't know what will happen.

"It's funny," she looked out across the water. "If I close my eyes, I can image that this is Earth. The sky's the same. The water's the same. It smells like Christmas right now."

The candle sputtered. The lift outside squealed to a halt. Kira swallowed thickly and closed her eyes, flicking the power switch on the translator and stuffing it into her pocket. Instead, she pulled out the journal that she had taken from the table and began to methodically tear the pages into small bits. The wind picked up the white flakes and swirled them down towards the lake. It looked, Kira thought, like snowfall.


	8. Courtesy Call

This will be the last update of Lux until December. All of November will be dedicated to cranking out my NaNoWriMo…thing. Hopefully, with God on my side, this'll be the last sprint I'll have to run through. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

Chapter Eight: Courtesy Call

Low clouds hung over the canyon of Nyleve's Falls, hiding the two suns and their midmorning brilliance behind a thick, dark gray shroud. Light rain misted the rust-colored hull of the _Vortex Rikers, _pooling in its metal seams and running off the engine bell to form a skinny fall of water onto dry land far below.

Chak'ti stepped heavily out of his surface skimmer and squinted up at the bulk of the alien ship embedded in the rocky canyon wall. _What an ugly piece of machinery, _he thought with a sneer. _It's a miracle that this thing even flew to begin with. _

He glanced behind him irritably, staring at the entrance to the Rajigar Mine. The Brutes that had been put in charge of this particular mining operation were such stupid creatures that they hadn't even bothered to investigate the crash site themselves. It would have saved him a lot of trouble and nagging from the General. Indeed, he would catch hell from Shas when he returned, considering it had taken him a solid two weeks to reach the site from when he was first dispatched.

From what he could remember, this particular vessel crashed about a month before, and regular shipments of Terrans had arrived at various Skaarj strongholds throughout the surrounding quadrants. There was even a report of a group of humans spotted near the Sunspire, which was ten quadrants to the north of this particular crash site, but then again, he wasn't sure if the Terrans were from this ship or from the one that crash-landed five months previous. _It's all a matter of failed communication, _he decided as he irritably made his way down the rubble slope behind the spacecraft, looking for an entrance. _Even Shas doesn't know what he wants me to look for in this hunk of junk._

On the other side of the ship, a side panel had been kicked out of the hull; the opening was too small for him to fit through. He thrummed in frustration. Was he going to have a _blow _a hole in this ship to get into it?

Straightening up from examining the hole, he paused, his body tense. Cautiously he sniffed the air a few times, and then narrowed his eyes. Did he smell…smoke?

--

849 picked at her broiled biterfish, pulling its white flesh off of its skeleton and nibbling it carefully. Ash and Myscha exchanged quick glances, but decided to leave her be. She hadn't been…right…since the Brute's attack several days prior. It was all they could do to get her to wake up in the mornings; watching her at least attempt to eat on her own was pitifully heartening.

Ash pulled out his translator and laid it on the table, activating its voice-to-voice function. "Myscha, do you know if any Terrans have made it off-world before the _Vortex, _er, 'sky chariot', crashed?"

Myscha kept staring at 849 for a moment more before he spoke. The voice that the translator played his words back in had a comically British accent. "I heard stories that another sky chariot had been overtaken by the sky demons, and that Terrans were being captured and put into slavery like my people. None were allowed to escape. But since your chariot crashed, I have been unable to return to my home, and so I do not know more information. I am sorry."

"I actually have thought about that a bit," Ash said around a mouthful of fish. "You're the only Nali in this whole valley. You live on one meal a day and have no family around. What's the deal with that?"

Myscha blinked. "Deal?"

"He means," 849 interrupted in a dull voice, "why are you here by yourself, surrounded by enemies?"

Myscha looked down at the fish bones on his plate. His eyes grew sad, but he regained his composure and said, "My family lives very far from here, in the village of Harobed. I was a priest there, but my son assumed my position when I received a vision from the great river god Chizra about another sky chariot destined to fall from the heavens. It took many days and nights to travel here, and frequently I feared for my life, but Chizra commanded that I come here and wait for your arrival."

Ash cleared his throat. "And, ah, why did Chizra want you to wait for us?"

Myscha turned his golden eyes to the prison guard. "There is a prophecy that has been passed down from the time before even the sky demons came to Na Pali," he said quietly. "It is said that the messiah of my people will arrive in a strange star chariot, in a shower of fire and lightning, and rise up against the scourge of Na Pali and restore peace to the world."

The silence which filled the room was only punctuated by the spitting and hissing of the wood on the fire. After a moment, 849 pushed out of her seat and grabbed another log from the pile in the corner and threw it into the flames. The room brightened; ruddy light danced on the walls.

Ash swallowed the chunk of fish he had been chewing. "So, what you're saying, is that humans are your messiahs?"

"There is just one messiah," Myscha corrected. "The prophecy clearly states that a warrior princess will come from the stars and liberate my people."

Ash pushed his lower lip out. "So, you don't know who exactly this 'messiah' person is, then."

Myscha nodded. "Unfortunately, I don't. That is why I must make sure of the survival of as many humans as I can. Sadly, you two were the only ones I found near the crash site that were still alive."

"So your job was to come here and wait for us. You did that. What now?"

Myscha opened his mouth, and then closed it. He seemed at a loss for words and looked down at the floor, fidgeting, wringing his hands in his lap. "I do not know," he whispered. "I have received no other spiritual messages from lord Chizra. I fear the gods are upset. The messiah could be anywhere, and if we haven't rescued her yet, all could be lost."

849 turned her back to the fire, arching her shoulders to allow the warmth to soak through her flight suit. "So why aren't you just going around rescuing all the females?" she asked. "Wouldn't that save you some time?"

"The messiah is but one of a large and sacred race," Myscha said solemnly. "Our priorities rest on serving the warrior princess, but we cannot ignore one of her male servants if we find them in distress."

"Male servants," 849 giggled. Ash cast a sideways glance at her, his lips quirked upwards. It was the first time she had smiled in days.

"Anyway, I was thinking," he said loudly, just to break the somber mood, "that we should start moving to avoid detection. To tell you the truth, our proximity to that Mine has been creeping me out. If any more Brutes come at us any time soon, we'll be out of ammunition in a second. Two Enforcers are not going to protect us in any sort of attack. I mean, the _Vortex Rikers _is bound to draw attention soon. It's been, what, a month since the crash?"

"Ash, we don't have the supplies to go waltzing around Na Pali," 849 said irritably. "How far did you get before you came crying back here with your tail between your legs?"

"That was different," Ash insisted. "I was chased out by a Skaarj scout. I'm talking, we take all the ammunition we have, both Enforcers, and as much food as we can carry, and we make it through the Mine in a day or less. I don't know what's on the other side, but at least we won't be cornered. You can try to take us to your village—Harobed—can't you, Myscha?"

The Nali tilted his head to the side. "While it is true that I am capable of taking you to my village, I have not yet been ordered to leave Nyleve's Falls. It would be foolish of me to leave my post if Chizra has not decreed that I go. I am willing to supply you with directions, should you so desire to sojourn there, but I cannot evacuate."

"But what if the Skaarj or the Brutes find out about this place?"

Myscha's answer was simple. "Then I shall die."

The two Terrans exchanged glances. "That…isn't quite the answer we were hoping for," Ash said with an unsure smile on his face. "I mean, sooner or later, you'll need to leave, and 849 and I want to be sure you get back to your village safely. We can't just abandon you out here."

Myscha's thin lips curved upwards. "You will not be abandoning me when you leave. You are meant to go out into the world and rescue my enslaved brothers. Your stay here, while most welcome, has been longer than I anticipated."

849 chuckled. "You're sick of him already, huh, Myscha?" she asked, smiling over her shoulder as she basked in the warmth of the flames.

"I was referring to the both of you," the Nali answered, puzzled at 849's attempt at humor. Ash couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"That's right, you tell 'er," he said, getting up from the table and taking their empty plates in his broad hands. "Thanks for dinner; it was wonderful, as usual, Myscha." He nudged 849 out of the way and scraped the remains of the fish bones into the fireplace. "Can you go outside and wash these, 849?"

The prisoner looked at the brown clay disks with an unreadable expression before clasping them in her fingers and standing up from her seat. "They're made of dirt; they don't need to be washed," she muttered as she made her way towards the door. Ash frowned at her.

"They are not made of _dirt._ It's just unfired clay. Honestly, I know more about domestic economics than you do, woman."

849 pushed the door open with her foot. "Watch what you say to the _warrior princess_," she smirked, and kicked the door shut behind her.

--

Chak'ti cautiously approached the lip of the sheer cliff that plunged down to the Nyleve River. He could see an exit shaft of one of the Rajigar mine tunnels in a clearing far below. His eyes followed the line of dry land until he caught a glimpse of a peculiar square of light thatch. A roof. The roof of a hut. Smoke curled lazily up from its single chimney.

He hummed a low growl, his tail twitching. _Found you. _

--

The river was calm, for which 849 was grateful; she didn't particularly want to be any more wet and cold than she already was. She pulled one of her sleeves over the palm of her hand and scrubbed at the rough surface of Myscha's plates. "Guy's gotta get some better china," she muttered. "No wonder all the food tastes gritty."

A fish jumped out of the water nearby. Seconds later it nearly threw itself onto the bank, scales streaming. She paused in her cleaning, staring at the commotion, noticing a dark shadow trailing the little biterfish wherever it swam. A split second later, the shadow flickered; the biterfish did not resurface.

849 resumed her cleaning. "It must be lunchtime for everyone."

When she finished her task, she stood up and stretched, trying to wring out her sleeve with one hand. A rumble of thunder wound its way through the clouds. The prisoner looked up, sighing.

_Ash wants to leave in this kind of weather? I don't know about him, but I'm happy here. And even if we do go to Myscha's village, who's to say that there are still Nali there to take care of us?_

There was movement behind her. 849 tensed and then rolled her eyes. Ash, most likely; trying to push her into the river or something just as childish. The ground was wet and sloppy; he probably had a handful of gunk that he was preparing to chuck at her backside.

"I know you're there, Ash," she said loudly, putting her hands on her hips. "And if you don't want to get a faceful of plate, then I suggest you back away and put the mudpie down."

No answer, save for the quiet rain. 849 furrowed her eyebrows. "Ash?" She turned.

Definitely _not _Ash.

Its scales glowed an iridescent green hue in the rain, sparkling as it stalked up behind her. The claws that tipped its feet and hands looked like smooth ivory, sharper than daggers. It lacked any sort of armor, but circular metal braces were clasped around its wrists. She had to tilt her head nearly all the way back to even see its face. Yellow eyes started back down at her, the pinpoint irises fixed on her unmoving body. Its carriage was freakishly similar to a human body, save for the wagging tail.

A _Skaarj? _

No Brute was this. It looked like it had the reflexes of a cat. Even as it was standing in front of her, it had raised itself up on the balls of its feet and had was bobbing up and down slightly; the movement of the dim light on its scales was hypnotic, and she became rooted to the spot. She was too surprised to be terrified, too taken aback to scream. She merely stood there, accepting its presence, but not believing it. The rain was coming harder now, and water streamed off both of their bodies. The muddy ground sucked at her shoes.

--

Chak'ti stood in front of the motionless Terran, flexing his muscles and trying to be as imposing a figure as possible, but somehow the small creature wasn't affected by his display. It just stood there dumbly, not even bothering to call for help, eyes transfixed on his. He hissed. The Terran still did not move.

_Well, isn't this a precious sight, _he thought, taking a step forwards. _It's trying to stand its ground. _As he had expected, the Terran took one step back. Any further and she'd be knee-deep in the swiftly-rising river.

_Shas wants me to harvest females, _he mused, _but it would be quite fun to drown this one. _With this idea in mind, he took another step forwards—

--and was immediately knocked to the side by a blow that seemingly came out of nowhere. He staggered but regained his footing on the slippery ground, immediately clenching his fist and drawing forth his Razik blades. He dropped to a crouch, bracing one hand in the mud, and spun to face whoever had had the nerve to shove him out of the way.

In front of him, visibly shaking but standing with hands clenched, was a Nali. He was positioned protectively in front of the Terran, glaring as hatefully as he could at Chak'ti, staring him dead in the eyes. Chak'ti couldn't suppress the snarl of contempt that bubbled out of his throat. _Worthless slave—he had the nerve to touch me?_

He broke into a run, making a huge dive at the brown-skinned creature, the force of their colliding bodies driving them both into the ground. His claws sunk into the paper-thin skin of the Nali's chest; he dragged his hand downwards, exposing pulsing internal organs. The Terran shrieked and backpedaled out of the way. Chak'ti raised his arm for a decapitating blow from his Razik blades--but he was driven back by three sharp pains in his chest. Blood began spurting out from beneath his scales. The Nali scooted out from underneath him, stumbling to its feet; it collapsed a few feet away. Looking up in surprise, he saw a second Terran—a male—holding a gun with the barrel pointed straight at him.

_So, they want to play war with me, _he thought, approaching the Nali again. _Let's see how fun this gets. _

_--_

"849, get Myscha inside," Ash said from between clenched teeth. "You need to hurry, now. When you're inside, lock the door and don't come out until you hear me say so."

The prisoner inched towards the fallen Nali. "What if I don't hear you say so?" she whispered shakily.

"Then don't come out." She heard the barest hint of a smile in his terse voice. She knelt down, keeping her eyes on the Skaarj that crouched mere feet away, and put her hands underneath Myscha's torso. He lifted easily off of the ground. She supported him against her shoulder and began limping towards the hut. She heard the Skaarj shuffle behind her and started; Ash was quick with the trigger and drove the alien back with a barrage of bullets. She practically fell into the hut and slammed the door shut behind her.

Myscha groaned, crumpling onto the mat in the corner of the room. 849 remained by the door, wringing her hands. "Myscha, I need to help him," she said hoarsely. There were sounds of a louder scuffle outside; Ash let out a short cry of pain. It was all she needed to hear. For the moment, her fear dissipated and she flung the door open, her hand going to her hip, where her Enforcer's holster was kept. She withdrew the gun, feeling its familiar weight in her palm. She had to trust herself to aim correctly. She couldn't have another panic attack; it would cost Ash his life if she fucked this up. _I won't miss. I can't miss. _

The Skaarj and Ash were moving gracefully around the clearing, drenched to the bone, each anticipating the other's moves with alarming accuracy. The Skaarj would start forwards just as Ash aimed his Enforcer; both would jump back, and the attack would begin from the beginning. 849 gently closed the door behind her and dropped to a crouch beside the wall, trying to still her thundering heart. She slipped her index finger over the trigger and said a quick prayer to whoever might be watching over them on this hunk of rock.

Her aim, for the moment, was true; the bullet connected neatly with the back of the Skaarj's head. It spun on its heel and snarled, pointing its arm straight out. A brilliant flash momentarily dazzled her eyes; an electrical shock filled her body with extreme pain a split second later. She cried out and fell back against the side of the hut, gritting her teeth. What did it just do to her?

"849! Get out of the way!"

Ash's voice seemed to be coming from very far away. Disgruntled, but determined not to become a burden to her companion, she held the Enforcer up again and fired directly in front of her, hoping that the Skaarj was coming directly at her. Fortunately, it was, and her shots met their mark. Not so fortunately that the Skaarj easily knocked the gun away and landed a fierce punch directly into the side of her head. She flew several feet in the opposite direction, landing directly on her back, the wind knocked out of her. Her fingers clutched at thin air; she had lost her grip on the Enforcer. She couldn't find it even if she tried, what with the stars swimming in her eyes.

As soon as Ash saw 849 go soaring through the air, he knew he had to act quickly. The Skaarj looked entirely capable of taking both of them down, and he wasn't sure that he had enough bullets to kill it. Running towards the alien as it stalked towards the fallen prisoner, Ash leapt and landed on its back, pressing the muzzle of the gun to the back of its head and firing as many shots as he could before it shook him off. A pair of jagged silver blades came hissing out of the metal rings around its wrist and, without warning, the Skaarj launched itself towards the prison guard, swiping with the blades, aiming for Ash's neck. He barely danced out of the way, firing desperately the whole time. Half of his shots were missing. _When is this thing going to die?!_

The Skaarj chased him around the clearing; Ash could barely keep his balance has he backpedaled and tried to aim at the same time. All of a sudden his foot knocked against something heavy and hard. Dodging another swipe from the Skaarj, he chanced a glance down at the ground. It was 849's Enforcer; he could see the prisoner's prone body a few feet away.

Ash feigned to the side; the Skaarj spooked and leapt backwards. He took the chance to snatch the gun up from the ground and fire with double the ammunition, holding both Enforcers out in front of him, aiming as best as he could for the Skaarj's head. He could see the blood coating its emerald-green scales, but it didn't seem to be slowing down or weakening. In fact, its attacks increased in ferocity with every shot that connected.

Another leap forwards, and the Skaarj was right in front of him.

_How does it move so fast--! _

This time Ash didn't have anywhere to go, and all he could do was hold his hands up and try to protect his head as the Skaarj's blades rammed right through his chest. He choked, tasting blood, and bit back a scream as his body was lifted into the air as if it weighed nothing. The Skaarj was staring up into his face, its head tilted, and flexed its arm, preparing to throw him. Ash summoned his remaining strength, and, as quickly as he could, brought both Enforcers up and fired, point-black, right into the Skaarj's eyes.

Its death was rather anti-climactic. There was no noise; just the quick slice of bullets through eye and brain tissue; its legs crumpled; the body followed suit. Ash landed on his side, staring at his dead assailant, with the Razik blades still embedded in his chest wall. He coughed, spitting blood onto the ground. "849," he whispered to the prone figure somewhere behind him. "…849?"

She didn't answer; she had probably been knocked unconscious. It was just as well. She'd be useless in this situation, anyhow—would probably panic like before and lock herself in the cabin with Myscha. Which reminded him—was the Nali still alive? He hadn't come out of the cabin—but then again, he'd sustained pretty horrible wounds.

Ash tried to sigh, but his lungs constricted painfully, and his vision blurred with the new wave of pain. He tried moving his arms, trying to remove the blades in his torso, but it was useless. His blood made a crimson pool beneath his body.

_So this is what dying feels like._

To be honest, he really never expected to get off of the planet's surface. The horrors he had seen, just in the Rajigar Mine alone, had proven to him that the planet was as hostile as any, and it would require a huge amount of ammunition, strength, courage, and, hell, luck, to be able to survive. He had seen a whole group of men slain by just one of the Skaarj, and he considered himself lucky to have lasted as long as he did against _this _one.

But now he was dying. Wasn't he just planning to leave the cabin with 849? And who was going to take care of 849 when he was gone?

_I will live!_

That's right. She promised him that she would, hadn't she. He could only hope that she'd try her best, and, if she failed, that her death would be painless.

He hadn't even gotten to ask her for her name. Unfortunate.

He looked over the Skaarj's hulking shoulder, at the two crystal waterfalls that were bars of silver mist in the rain, and listened to the rain falling fast on the bloody ground.


	9. Monster

Chapter Nine: Monster

Baran stood in the open doorway of his hut, staring moodily at the unhappy grey skies. Foul weather had plagued his village for the entire week; if the rains broke again then the redfruit crop would be ruined and impossible to harvest. Already the neat rows of the emerald green plants were beginning to look sloppy and half-drowned; many of the fruit seeds were already eaten through with rot. He sighed, putting his lower set of hands on his hips and crossing his upper arms across his chest. Sometimes he wondered if Chizra and Velora and all the other so called 'gods' weren't just laughing at the Nali race's misfortunes.

"If it doesn't come from the ground, it comes from the sky," he muttered, kicking a stray stone and watching it bounce along on the slushy ground. He swept his gaze around to take stock of how the rest of the villagers were reacting to the inclement situation. Several townspeople were tending to their cows; others were dragging bales of drying grass into barns to keep them from getting soaked through. In the far distance, the Harobed Chapel rose into the gloom, the peak of its spire hidden in the low clouds. He offered up a quick prayer for his brother, the ex-high priest of Harobed, who had taken it upon himself to wander off to Chizra-knows where in order to wait for 'the Messiah', whoever that might be. Baran had more realistic expectations about the Skaarj threat on Na Pali. While everyone else was praying for some miraculous being to come blazing through the land and restoring peace, Baran told himself every morning that a savior would not come and that he was better off living his life in constant expectation of death. It was much easier that way.

A cow lowed mournfully as its owner prodded it back into its stall in the barn. Baran turned around and closed the door behind him, shutting the chill out of his small hut. Thankfully, for now, the only trouble that the village had to deal with was constant rain. The Skaarj hadn't figured out about the small Nali village—their focus was mainly on the area to the south, on a bloody and brutal stone structure that was known to the Nali and the Skaarj alike as the Dark Arena. Baran shuddered to think of it. It had been an ancient Nali sacrificial temple, long abandoned after the warring Nali lords had died out, but with the arrival of the Skaarj came the terrifying stories that the Arena was being used for unspeakable acts against Nali and Terrans alike—

Someone was pounding frantically on his door. Before he got a chance to reach for the handle it burst open, revealing Diaba, a young Nali mother who had recently given birth to her second child. She still looked weak and pale, but her eyes were alight with something akin to panic.

"The Messiah, Baran—I think the Messiah is here! She's asking us if we know where her kinsmen are. At least I think that's what she's saying—she keeps saying 'friend', too, or something—but you have to come, and come quickly—I think she needs help!"

Baran put his upper set of hands on Diaba's shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. "Diaba, what are you talking about? The Messiah doesn't exist, and even if she did, she wouldn't be wandering around Harobed in the rain. Are you sick? Do you need to get some more bedrest?"

"I'm fine!" She slapped his hands away from her shoulders. "And how could you say such a thing about the Messiah when your brother is out there risking his life for us all? That's heartless and cruel and that mentality is something that I would expect from a foolish child and not from a full-grown man." Her face grew troubled. "I wonder if we should have prayed to Chizra some more to stop the rain. The Messiah seems a little disappointed that our crops are so poor."

Baran rolled his eyes. "Would you stop talking as if this visitor is actually the 'Messiah', please? And anyway, why are you over here in the first place? I don't have the power to save my crops, let alone this miraculous Terran that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Be reasonable, please, Diaba."

Diaba crossed all four of her arms and gave Baran an ugly look. "Well, I was coming here because your brother was the high priest, and he frequently had visions about our savior. I don't know if you ever talked to your brother or not, but I remember him describing what she looks like. I thought you could verify if this Terran really is our Messiah or not. And another thing—you know the Terrans' language. Myscha was teaching you before he left. You have to talk to her. You have to."

"Myscha and I haven't been on good terms for years because I refuse to acknowledge that another alien race would magically come from space and rescue us from the Skaarj. Of course he wasn't going to talk to me about Terran women and what they looked like." He chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. "…Although he did say something about…."

_He said something about a distinguishing mark. A brand of some sort. _

Diaba was looking at him expectantly. He shook his head quickly and brushed past her into the open air. "But I tell you what; I'll come see this Terran of yours and try to remember if Myscha said anything specific."

The young Nali's face lit up as she hurriedly followed Baran down the gently sloping hill towards her hut near the middle of town. He noticed that quite a large crowd had gathered in the doorway; he had to push past the throng of people rather forcefully just to get into the front room. A few Nali stepped out of the way as he entered; others were practically on their faces in front of the figure sitting on a low cot near the fire. It looked up when he approached the front. He stopped a few feet away from the cot and stared blankly down at the Terran before a shiver of absolute fear ran down his spine. There was a bad smell in the air—he couldn't identify it, although it smelled of something faintly familiar, and dangerous.

The Terran was definitely a female, and while that was supposedly the gender of the so-called Messiah, he couldn't bring himself to even _pretend _that she was the savior of the planet Na Pali. She was absolutely emaciated; her skin looked like white parchment stretched over her bones. Her eyes, huge and dark on her thin face, were sunk deep into their sockets, and spoke of unspeakable pain and fear. Her body was draped in a thin blue shift and her legs were bare—_how _could the villagers not see these things? She was a victim—merely another newly escaped slave of the Skaarj. How could they think that she had come to rescue them when she looked like she could barely save herself? To her credit, though, she looked rather at home surrounded by a group of four-armed aliens, the majority of which probably dwarfed her by at least a foot.

The Terran was smiling at him, even as he was gawking at her. He felt an elbow in his ribcage and heard Diaba's voice hissing in his ear, "Say something to her!"

Baran sighed and wracked his brain for the proper greeting that the human could understand. How many months had it been since he had actually practiced the pronunciations of such a choppy and complicated language? "Good…mor-hing," he said slowly, watching the girl's face carefully to see if he had addressed her correctly. To his surprise, a small smile curled her cracked lips.

"Good morning. What is your name?"

_Name. _He remembered that word. "Baran," he said, placing his upper right hand on his chest. He gestured back to her. "What is your name?"

"They call me—." The girl paused and she seemed to collect herself, clearing her throat and looking down at her lap. Then, with an almost forced smile, she placed her right hand on her own chest and said weakly, "Happy."

The movement of her arms brought Baran's gaze down to her lap. He had to blink a few times in order to completely believe his eyes. The girl's—Happy's—right arm was normal enough, if not sickeningly skinny. But her left arm had been viciously amputated just below the elbow, and had instead been replaced by a crude representation of a prosthetic limb. Now he knew where the smell was coming from. It was a disgusting mix of oily metal mixed with nearly gangrenous flesh. He finally realized why the smell was so familiar—he hadn't spent years performing forced labor in the Rajigar Mines to not recognize Skaarj metalworks when he saw it. This girl had recently undergone a Skaarj medical treatment. Their so-called 'scientists' would perform these kinds of sick tests on unwilling alien participants so that their warriors wouldn't have to bear the brunt of their experimentation. Usually it ended in horrific death for the Skaarj's guinea pigs, considering the tests consisted mainly of newly developed enhancement drug injections that would destroy the unlucky subject from the inside out. However, this Terran didn't look to be suffering from anything other than poor nutrition, and the false arm was the only testament to any sort of 'treatment'. On the other hand, the wound was still fresh. There was still some time before side-effects could take their hold.

Baran didn't like it. Usually the Skaarj kept strict watch over their patients. And yet here was this Terran, her arm still bleeding, sitting there in Harobed like she had just walked out of whatever prison she had been in. Something was amiss.

"She's not the Messiah," he said quietly to Diaba. She cut a glare at him.

"You've only exchanged two words with each other, and already you're spouting that nonsense again? Why don't you two keep talking? You told her your name, didn't you?"

Baran clenched all four of his fists. "I'm telling you, it _can't _be her." His voice was escalating. "How could you look at this pitiful excuse for a living being and call her a 'Messiah'? She's half dead—she's been subjugated to Skaarj medical practices—do none of you see that hulking piece of metal on her arm? She's not our savior and she hasn't come here to liberate us. She's just some lost Terran looking for somewhere to stay, and in the meantime Skaarj are crawling all over our planet looking for Terrans to exterminate! Her being here only endangers our lives. We have to get rid of her."

Diaba seized his elbow and dug her nails into his skin. "What are you saying?" she hissed at him, dragging him away from the group of confused Nali. "Even if she isn't the Messiah, she's still part of the Sacred Race and it is our duty to protect her! Myscha said so, as did the Prophet of Velora! You can't tell us to get rid of this girl. She's done no harm to us—"

"But she will! Don't you see?" He gestured back to Happy. "Look on her arm! She's one of their experiments—she's probably full of their enhancement drugs, and they'll be looking for her. If we keep her here then the Skaarj will find her and kill us all for housing her. Think of your children!"

Diaba's hand shot out and slapped him savagely across the face. "I _am _thinking of my children," she snarled. "How dare you say that to me, when you have no family to speak of? My children are now in the presence of a great woman, who, if she isn't the Messiah, is part of the Sacred Race of beings descended from Velora herself. And yet you stand here insulting her—like she is common! The only one who should leave this village is you, Baran, if your attitude is thus!"

Happy cleared her throat, interrupting them. She stood up shakily; her face had turned an ashen grey color, but her smile still wavered on her lips. "I can leave if you'd like me to."

Baran stared at her.

"What did she say?" Diaba ground out. Baran paused a moment and then said, "She volunteered to go."

"No!" the Nali woman ran forward and wrapped all four of her arms around Happy protectively; the Terran seemed surprised with this action of familiarity and slowly wrapped her good arm around the Nali's torso. There was a strange reluctance in her expression….

"Tell her we'll all risk our lives for her safety. Tell her she has nothing to fear from us and that she'll be safe as long as she stays with us." Diaba's eyes sparkled with emotion; most of the other Nali were muttering their assent as well. "Tell her, Baran!"

Baran set his mouth, but at the furious looks from an entire roomful of his village companions, he relented. "Happy."

The girl turned her blank eyes in his direction. She seemed defeated. "Yes?"

He tried to find the right words that she could understand. For some reason the only thing he could think of was a rather harsh 'get out'. "They want you…to not go. They say that they will…peace with you, and live you comfortably." _I'm probably speaking in gibberish; she doesn't understand a word I'm saying. _

"So they want me to stay. They want to keep me, a Terran, in the village, even though the Skaarj have rules about such actions?"

He shrugged, not understanding her exact words but comprehending their meaning. "They will die for you now that you are here." Then, as an afterthought, "But I will not."

She locked eyes with him; he then turned away and pushed past the throng of villagers and into the sopping twilight.

It had begun to rain again.

---

"I need you to kill me."

Baran practically vaulted out of bed and put his head through the thatch roof of his hut when he heard the voice, low and urgent, in his ear. He sat up frantically in his cot, gasping for air as he was jolted out of a deep sleep. Turning his head and seeing a ghostly, bony face seemingly hovering next to his bedside didn't do anything to calm his nerves either. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could make out the slight form of the Terran girl kneeling by his bedside. He rubbed his eyes incredulously.

"What are you doing here?" He asked in his native tongue before he could stop himself to translate. It didn't matter; she seemed to understand the sentiment in his words.

"Kill me," she said again. Baran recognized the word 'kill' instantly.

"What?" he whispered, remembering to speak in the language that she understood. Happy reached forwards and pressed something cold and hard into the palm of one of his hands. Feeling along the shape, Baran realized it was a fishing knife. He recoiled instantly.

_Has she gone mad? Have the Skaarj done this to her, too? _

He stared into her eyes; in the shadows, her face looked exactly like a skull. After a moment he sat up and reached for the low table next to his cot; after his fingers closed around a box of matches, he broke one off and struck it. The sulfur ignited and he quickly brought the burning wood up to the wick of his bedside candle. The darkness retreated to the far corners of the attic, but somehow Happy's hollow cheekbones and eye sockets were thrown deeper into shadow; he could barely see her eyes. However, her mouth was set and she seemed to be getting impatient with his hesitancy.

"Kill me," she said, deliberately putting more emphasis on the word 'me', "or I will kill _you_."

Her bony finger pointing straight at his chest was pathetic in its own right, but her threat seemed weak and forced, even to his inexperienced ears. He looked at the knife in his hands, searching his brain for the right response to her demand.

"Why?" he finally asked.

She seemed to be at a loss, sighing and running her good hand through her unkempt hair. "Trap," she said, barely giving voice to the word. Baran furrowed his brows. _She thinks we're trapping her here? That can't be what she wants to be killed over. It's got to be the Skaarj—they've injected her with something._

Unable to think of anything encouraging to say to her, he simply reached out with one hand and tousled her hair. "Nali will die for you," he said, trying to get her to smile. If anything, his action made her even more panicked than before. She grasped at the knife in her hands, trying to wrench it from his grasp.

_Is she upset because I said I wouldn't die for her? _He held her away with his free arms and stood up, holding the knife out of her reach.

"What is wrong?" he asked desperately, trying to get her to sit still.

"If you don't kill me or chase me out of the village than you all will be slaughtered!" Happy was forgetting to use simple words, it seemed; Baran could only understand a handful. "You should know—you should know you cannot house Terrans and live! It's a trap, don't you get it? This whole place is surrounded by Skaarj!"

There was a shuffling sound from downstairs; Happy froze as someone began making their way up the ladder that led from the attic to the lower floor. The head and shoulders of a murky form appeared from the trapdoor.

"_Kyaaaa! _What are you _doing_?"

It was Diaba. She practically vaulted up from the ladder and tackle-dove Happy into the wall, away from Baran's bedside. Baran lowered his arm and realized that he had been holding the knife above his head. "We were just talking!" he protested.

Diaba was smothering Happy with her body. "Talking!" she cried incredulously. "Talking, you call it, with three of your hands around our poor Messiah's throat and the fourth about to plunge a knife into her heart! You kidnapped her out of my own _house_!"

"No I didn't! I haven't even left this room all night!"

"Then how did she get _here_?" Diaba demanded. "You're out of control! You cruel—heartless—murderous—heathen!" She pushed Happy towards the trapdoor, keeping the Terran distanced from Baran. Happy looked over her shoulder as she was herded downstairs. "Trap," she said again.

"The Village Mother will hear of his incident," Diaba snapped as she descended. "Don't be surprised if you are sent away by midmorning."

The door slammed shut behind her. Baran, his heart thundering, dropped the knife he held and collapsed back onto the bed.

What exactly was the trap? She said something about the Skaarj—but the Skaarj couldn't know about the village or they'd have invaded already.

Unless they had already come and were merely hiding…Baran shook the thought out of his head. The Skaarj delighted in torturing their Nali subjects; they wouldn't spare Harobed just because they wanted to keep their cover. But still, it was disconcerting. Happy's words wouldn't stop ringing in his ears. Why would she want to be killed over such a little thing as staying here?

He leaned back in bed. _Fine. If I'm not banished by tomorrow then I'll go find Happy and try to get her to explain to me what exactly is going on. _

_Something is very, _very _wrong here. _

Baran's sleep that night was not very restful; visions of the starving Terran's face kept floating up at him from the depths of his imagination and made it impossible for him to close his eyes. And so, while the first sun was barely peeking above the crest of the mountains, he got up and quietly left his hut, heading through the village in the chilly gloom. If the answers to this problem were anywhere, they'd be in the Chapel.

Years ago, when the Skaarj had first established dominance on Na Pali, an edict was sent through the land that commanded all Nali weaponry were to be handed over to Skaarj overlords immediately. It wasn't as if the Nali could threaten their rule with their crude knives and lances—the Skaarj merely wanted to exert total dominance and leave the Nali with little hope for an uprising. The main problems arose when the Skaarj encountered Terran weapons on Na Pali, and when addressed, the Nali made no comment about how many Terrans they had encountered over the years. Terrans were deadly adversaries to the Skaarj, and not just because of their intelligence; the wide variety of weapons they brought with them boggled the minds of even the top Skaarj gunsmiths. If any Nali were found hiding weapons caches of Terran equipment, they would be killed on sight—no questions asked.

Of course there were still Nali who protested—and of course that included Myscha. In the Harobed Chapel was Myscha's greatest secret—what he was planning to bestow upon the Messiah when she came from the stars, but that was before his latest vision which told him to go dancing off to Nyleve's Falls without a moment's notice. Now the secret lay waiting in the chapel's bell tower and the only one who knew about that particularly dangerous little secret was Baran. If the Skaarj were already here than they would be looking for it. That, and looking for their sick experiment that had miraculously escaped.

Harobed Chapel was small but elegant. Built by the current inhabitants' ancestors, it stood strong and proud in its own sacred space, cut off from the rest of the village by a tall stone barrier. Inside was a marble-floored room filled with pews, all facing a huge, pure Tarydium crystal statue of the Nali All-God, his four arms spread in the classic Nali cross pattern. Off to the side was a podium where the high priest stood and prayed along with the congregation on worshipping days. It was a quiet place, smelling of incense and woodsmoke. Baran had often come here as a child to meditate, until he stopped believing in all of the nonsense about Gods and saviors.

As he approached the double doors that led to the interior of the chapel he heard heavy footsteps inside. _Uncharacteristically_ heavy footsteps. He paused and his breath caught in his throat as he saw a hulking shadow dancing on the walls inside. _It couldn't be…!_

A hand shot out of the mist beside him and seized him by the arm, forcefully dragging him towards the far wall of the chapel. The hand was surprisingly warm and strong, and he felt himself following it even though he didn't know who had gotten a hold of him. The hand led him past the rear of the chapel and into the gated-off cemetery on the far side of the building. There, a strange, slightly mechanical voice demanded, "What are you _doing _here?"

He squinted through the fog and the predawn light, trying to see who was addressing him. To his surprise, it was another Terran. He couldn't tell if it was male or female; its body was draped in a rather shapeless shift that hid any distinguishing features. Its eyes were blue and its hair was a honeyed shade of gold—at least, that's what he could distinguish from what strands came from beneath the hood the figure was wearing. It also spoke in rather good Nalian tongue.

"I should be asking the same question of you," he said. "You are the second Terran that has appeared in my village in the past day. This can't be good news."

He noticed that the Terran was touching something mechanical in its lap. It was thin and square, with a clear screen onto which words were being relayed. The figure seemed to be reading them—it had to be some sort of translator. After a moment it typed something onto the screen and tapped a button. The mechanical voice came again. "Your village is in very great danger."

_I knew it. _"So that was a Skaarj in the chapel. You brought them here, didn't you?"

The Terran's twisted in what looked like pain as it read his words. After a moment, the mechanical voice said, "They brought _us _here."

_It's a trap…._

"So what's going to happen?"

The Terran shifted nervously. "They're in there looking for…something, I don't know what. They're waiting until tonight before they attack. It's against their rule for you to house Terrans—and yet a Terran girl has found sanctuary in your village, has she not?"

Baran grimaced. "It's not of my doing, but yes. My people want her to stay here."

"Listen to me. You've got to tell the villagers to get rid of her. Tell them that she has some sort of infectious disease, or something—you can_not _keep her here. You will all be slaughtered or enslaved—I don't know if the General is in good humor or not."

Baran swallowed heavily. "So what are you doing here? Are you a spy for the Skaarj?"

The Terran stood up and pulled the hood further over its eyes. "I'm trying to help you," the machine voiced. He was sure that if it had been talking, fury would have been etched into its voice. "Let's not confuse our allies with our enemies."

"All I'm saying is that Terrans who are under the influence of Skaarj rule tend to be less selfless than you're imagining. You could be leading us all into a trap—"

"_You're already in the trap!"_

The words sent a chill down Baran's spine. The Terran was looking around nervously, shifting from one foot to the other. "Look, I'm not even supposed to be here. I noticed you walking up to the abbey and decided that I had to say _something. _I'm supposed to be in there looking for hiding Terrans and God knows what else they want me to search for. I'm leaving now. The girl—Happy—is a decoy, don't you understand?...but I suppose you don't."

Baran stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Look, I don't want you here, either of you. The only things that you can bring to my village are death and destruction, apparently. But I'm not the one in charge, and even if I was, the whole village believes that Happy is the Messiah. If they see you then they'll probably think that you're the Messiah's second-in-command, or Chizra knows what else."

The Terran paused. "…What are you talking about? Messiah?"

"The Nali have a ludicrous idea that one of your race will come and liberate the entire planet from the Skaarj Regime. Apparently this Messiah is female and has some sort of marking on her that distinguishes her from the rest of the race—and the girl that came into our village last night has half of her arm missing, but that doesn't fool me. She isn't the Messiah. The Messiah isn't real. I'd be happy to see her go, but the townspeople already have their hopes up. It's too late."

The Terran started typing something into its translator, but a low snarl from behind them made its fingers freeze. It reached out and placed a hand over his mouth, putting its finger to its lips. Suddenly it put both hands on his chest and shoved him backwards. "Go!" Its voice was desperate. "Quickly, go!"

Baran didn't stop to think. Experience told him to trust the Terran just this once, and as he turned tail and ran out of the cemetery, he heard the Terran's mechanical voice say, "General, what seems to be the problem?"

A Skaarj _general _was here?

He didn't stop running until he passed through the stone gate. Then he collapsed back against the cold rocks and put his face in his hands, trying to clear his head.

So. They had until that night to prove to the Skaarj that they would follow orders and not house their Terran guest. The trap was set—if they didn't chase Happy out by nightfall then the entire village would be doomed. But how could he make the others believe that Happy was merely a pawn in the Skaarj's game? Of course none of the other villagers would believe him if Diaba had told them about their little incident last night—but he had to try.

The sun was rising rapidly, burning off the low cloud cover and making the snow-capped mountains around them burst into golden color. Baran composed himself and, casting a fleeting glace behind him at the Chapel, made his way back down the hill towards the heart of the village.

He had to tell the Village Mother.

**Nyleve's Falls**

The hut was filled with smoke coming from the embers of the dying fire. The air was thick with the smell of burning wood and rotting fish and something else—something coppery and tangy and fresh. 849 thought it smelled more like metal than blood.

She was kneeling on the floor next to Myscha's bed, supporting the Nali's head in her lap, her hands on his shoulders. She stared dully at his gauze-wrapped midsection, noting how pitiful her first aid had become. The blood had soaked through within a minute of her finishing the wrapping, and the white material bulged in the places where she couldn't quite work his entrails back into his body. The Nali's breath came intermittently, in short, painful pants. And all she could do was sit there and hold his head and watch him die.

She had woken up after the damage had been done. The Skaarj had paralyzed her body with some sort of electrical laser shot, and she had missed all the action from then on. When she had come to, the Skaarj was dead…and so was Ash. He and his enemy were locked together in death; she couldn't even bring herself to drag his body off of the Skarrj's wristblades. His face looked peaceful enough, though, and that was enough for her. Somehow she could deal with the prison guard's death…but Myscha's demise was becoming much more painful for her to deal with.

What had this Nali ever done? What arms had he ever raised against the Skaarj? All he had been doing was protecting her—all he ever _did_ was protect her. And now he was dying from a wound that she should have received. He didn't need to push her out of the way. She would have been just as happy being drowned or gutted. That way she didn't have to watch everyone around her dying—always dying, always death, always screaming and tears and pain and blood—!

This planet was cursed. It had to be. No planet could face such destruction of life and not be God-forsaken. And she was here, alone, save for this one Nali, her one friend in the world, and now he was—

Myscha's body convulsed weakly. A fresh wave of red began to bleed through the gauze on his midsection.

"Don't," she whispered hoarsely, staring unblinkingly at Myscha's face. "Don't go."

The Nali stirred and made a low moaning sound. 849's hands tightened reflexively around his shoulders. "No," she said, louder this time. "You _cannot _die. I will _not _let you die. You can't leave me alone. Do _not _leave me alone."

A lump in her throat began to grow, arresting her voice. Instead, she bent forward and rested her ear against Myscha's chest. She held her own breath as she listened to the Nali's heart skip once, twice….

"Myscha." She sat up and brought the palm of her hand up to his mouth, feeling for any sort of warmth.

"Myscha?"

Next to the _Vortex Rikers, _an adult rabbit lifted its right rear foot and scratched at the dirt around a choice wild redfruit. It dropped its tawny head and nibbled at the tender green shoot, settling down to enjoy its meal under the cover of the hulking starcraft.

Its head jerked up the next moment as a shriek exploded into the air from the riverside below. The rabbit pricked its ears forwards and listened as the sound seemed to go on forever, bouncing off of the rocks and filling the entire canyon with the sound of an animal in pain, an animal enraged—or a human who had passed her breaking point and was now little more than a mindless animal, encaged.

Hours later, when both of the suns had sunk and the world was bathed in the silver light of a waxing moon, the door to Myscha's riverside hut banged open. Ragged breathing and shuffling sounds issued forth, and then 849 appeared, dragging Myscha's limp form by two of his four arms. Gritting her teeth, she began hauling his carcass across the ground, unmindful of the fact that his uncovered intestines were catching on bits of rock and twigs and were slowly being pulled out of the gaping wound in his stomach. A red swath of blood marked their slow progress towards the river. Once in the shallows, she gave one last mighty pull and then stood panting as she watched the Nali's body bob back and forth in the current. His eyes were open, somewhat, and the prisoner leaned down, pinched his eyelids shut, and immediately wrapped the Nali's upper body in a crushing hug.

"Bye-bye," she said; her voice was chillingly devoid of emotion. With this last farewell she shoved Myscha's body into the river and watched as the current swallowed his lanky form and dragged him under the rushing water. Rinsing her hands in the water, she took a moment to stare at the waterfalls whose thundering existence had been the only constant in her life on the planet.

"Very pretty," she said, nodding to herself and standing up, flicking her fingers to get the droplets of water off. She looked over her shoulder at the hut, and then turned her gaze to the ramp that led up to where the entrance to the mine shaft rested in the side of the canyon wall.

That was where the Skaarj were. That was where the murderers of Ash and Myscha and all the other victims of Na Pali were residing. She was going to find them. She was going to find them all.

_Every fucking one of them. Every fucking one of them. Every fucking one of them. _

The words repeated themselves like a mantra in her head. Her feet began to move; slowly at first, until her rapidly beating heart was fueling her in an all out run, through the shallows, out of the river, and away from the memories of Myscha and Ash. And so Prisoner 849 of the prison vessel 254, C114-85EKLS _Vortex Rikers _took her first steps away from Nyleve's Falls to become a murderer once more.


	10. Action

I really, really, _really _didn't want to kill Myscha. However, his time came and went. And we've lost Miss 849 to insanity. Also, I've been spelling 'Rrajigar' wrong this whole time. I'll go back and fix it later.

Chapter Ten: Action

Norianna paced up and down the length of the walled-off cemetery. The hood of her ankle-length hooded cloak was pulled so far down over her forehead that she had trouble seeing where she was going in the inky gloom of a Na Palian midnight. She couldn't risk even the slightest chance of her pale face being seen by any of the Skaarj war party that had brought her and Happy to the village. Technically, she was supposed to be searching for more violations of Skaarj code—possession of weapons being the most serious—but her discussion with the Nali had given her a strange sense of unrest, and she had managed to relay a message to Happy, asking her to meet in the cemetery whenever she could so she could give voice to her fears, and perhaps formulate a plan to escape—or at least give the Nali a fighting chance. They didn't have much time, however—the Skaarj were currently finishing their sweep of the catacombs deep beneath the Chapel, and would surface soon to make their final decisions on whether or not to destroy Harobed. They probably would, given the item that they had found in the bell tower earlier that morning.

The Terran arrested her step when she heard rustling near the wall that separated the cemetery from the rest of the Chapel grounds. "Happy?"

Another cloaked figure slipped through the barely-open iron gates. "We have to make this quick," Happy said hoarsely, her breath cloudy in the near-freezing air. "The Nali woman who's housing me has a sixth sense about me being there. I swear I can't go outside to take a piss without her being upset that I'm gone."

"I don't envy you." Norianna stepped closer and enveloped Happy in a tight embrace. "How are you holding up?" She could feel the girl wince at the contact.

"Not so hot, but at least the cold numbs the pain." Happy gently extricated herself from Norianna and stamped her bare feet. "Now what did you want to talk to me about?"

Norianna paused, seeming to listen. "The Skaarj found an entire cache of weapons in the belfry," she said heavily, pulling the collar of her garb up around her neck. "The biggest thing they're pissed about is that they found a flak cannon—the thing is rusty as fuck, but it works, and it's got ammunition enough to last a while." She paused, resting her cheek in her hand and exhaling loudly. Her eyeballs felt like they were freezing. She'd have to hurry it up.

"So they're definitely going to strike, then," Happy mused through chattering teeth.

Norianna nodded shortly. "Definitely, but I don't know when, and that's the thing. I think we can evacuate the village before they make their move."

The darkness hid Happy's look of disbelief. "You're kidding," she said. "Us? Evacuate an entire _village _full of Nali? We can't even speak their language!" She turned on her heel as Norianna brushed past her and peeked out of the cemetery gates, humming a nervous little tune.

"I know, I know," Norianna interrupted. Happy was amazed to hear a thread of fear in the other woman's voice. It was the first time that her cellmate had shown her any other emotion except cheerfulness. "But I just got a really crazy idea."

"I do not wish to discuss this with you any further."

Baran knelt on a carpet in front of a well-stocked fire, facing an ancient priestess Nali seated on a low chair close to the ruddy blaze. Her face was turned towards the hearth, a pensive look on her features. She had been reading when he had burst into her chambers; the book was now resting on her lap and she was drumming her fingertips on its hard cover. Baran had reached her before Diaba could blow his credibility, but as soon as he mentioned the Terran's presence in the village, the Mother had become stony and unwilling to answer his questions.

"But, Mother," he said, trying not to sound like he was whining. "We have to make a decision, somehow. We can't just let her _stay _here."

"Why can't we?" For an old woman, her voice was extremely powerful. "She is of the Sacred Race, is she not? It is not for us to decide whether she is or is not the Messiah. We have been commanded to give sanctuary to any Terran being that asks it of us. That is all the reason I need to keep her here."

Baran could not keep the exasperation out of his voice. "But it's _dangerous_!"

The Mother's fingers drummed more forcefully on the cover of her book. "We are in very grave danger whether we have a Terran in our midst or not. We must do what we can and live our lives how we choose, and if the villagers choose Velora's will over their own, then it can't be helped." She sighed when she saw Baran's face fall. "Baran, be at peace. If it eases your mind at all, I do not believe that this girl is our savior, either. However I do think that there aren't going to be any catastrophic repercussions if we harbor a Terran for a little while."

"But there are two Terrans—I met another one by the abbey—and they both said that we're in a terrible trap if we don't force Happy to leave immediately! I _saw _a Skaarj in Harobed Chapel, Mother. We have until tonight to prove that we comply with Skaarj rule or else we'll all be destroyed."

"Since when do Skaarj keep their word?"

Baran paused. The Mother's voice had dropped to a low, emotionless tone. She held his gaze until he had to drop his eyes to stare at the pattern of the carpet on the floor. _Touche. _

"I don't mean to treat you so harshly, Baran," she said wearily, getting up from her chair and walking closer to the fire to warm her hands. "But you must understand. You _have _to understand what the Skaarj are like—you were one of their prisoners for most of your adolescent life. Skaarj _don't _bargain, and they _don't _spare lives once their rules have been transgressed. As far as they're concerned, the mere fact that we didn't chase the girl out as soon as she entered the village is an excuse enough in their eyes to begin the bloodshed."

Baran felt like a large hand was clamped around his throat, making it almost impossible for him to breathe. Even though he was close to the fire, a cold sweat broke out on his body. The Mother reached over to her shoulder and flicked a bit of fuzz off of a panel on her ceremonial robe.

"Baran, the village is going to be destroyed tonight, whether we keep the girl in our midst or not. All we can hope for is Velora's blessing for following her orders." She smiled sympathetically. "I would rather be dignified and die with the peace of mind that I did something right, than try to placate the scourges of Na Pali and turn my back on my own religious upbringing. I know you're quite against all of this talk of gods and miracles, but…I suppose that just makes you blissfully ignorant."

Horrified, Baran leapt off of the carpet. "You're condemning hundreds of Nali to death!"

The Village Mother returned to her seat, supporting her chin with her folded hands. "I condemn no one. Everyone in this village knows of both edicts—do not harbor Terrans, and do not collect their weapons—and they have chosen their actions accordingly."

"Because they don't know any better! They've put their trust in this sick Terran who can barely even walk because they've been _told _that the Messiah is a human—but do they know? Do _you _know? Even Myscha had his doubts—"

"But he still left for Nyleve's Falls," the Mother interrupted. Baran stamped his foot.

"I don't _care_! The point is, the villagers are protecting this Terran because they think that even if the Skaarj _do _come, she'll protect them somehow. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous!"

"No one is telling you to stay," snapped the priestess. "If you feel so disgusted by our beliefs, then feel free to leave. I believe you'd be happier that way, rather than dying along with the rest of us."

Baran stood there, shaking, backlit by the fire. "I'll leave, then," he said after a moment.

The Village Mother stared at his back as he stalked away. When the door closed behind him, she reached for her book and opened it back to the page she had marked and continued to read quietly.

_Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. _Baran practically stalked back to his hut and threw open the door with a bang.

He almost fell backwards out of his own threshold when he was greeted with the broad muzzle of a devastating-looking weapon, clutched in the hand of the same cloaked figure he had met at the Chapel. The Terran girl called "Happy" stood directly behind her partner, staring placidly at Baran with a blank expression on her face.

"Call the others," the translator's mechanical voice ordered. "Or I will kill you."

___

Evening over the Sacred Passage bloomed sweet and cool, with a light breeze whipping the sunset-tainted clouds into wispy purple feathers in the sky and causing the palmy leaves of the surrounding foliage to whisper against one another. The Passage was a relatively unknown valley nestled in the midst of a large mountain range that housed the sacred temple of Chizra, the Nali Water God.

A warrior-class Skaarj paced around the deep pool of water that was situated next to the high walls that surrounded the temple, glancing irritably at the gulley that led towards the back entrance of the Rrajigar Mine. Another member of the warrior caste was supposed to have come and relieve him of his post over an hour ago, and it wasn't common for any Skaarj to break rules by being late.

A noise from the gulley that led down to the mine entrance finally alerted the warrior to another presence in the area. _It's about time, _he thought with an audible snarl, leaving the poolside to give his comrade a thorough tongue-lashing. However, his hurried gait was arrested when he saw that the figure emerging from the metal exit corridor of the mine was _not _a Skaarj. It was a _Terran_, of all things.

The Skaarj flexed his hand, triggering the mechanism on his wrist to produce the Razik blades from their implanted sheath underneath the scales of his arm. Already stressed because he was late for another assignment in the mine, he figured that it would be wonderful therapy to dispatch this Terran in the most painful way possible.

Its pace was slow and unsteady; more than once it stumbled onto all fours, dropping the pathetically small weapon it clutched in one hand. If it wasn't so funny to watch, the Skaarj would've decapitated the pitiful creature immediately. It raised its head and immediately met his gaze; the Skaarj gave a smug little snarl, expecting the Terran to turn tail and flee.

Surprisingly, his warning went unheeded, as the human did little more than consider him with a blank expression and continue on its drunken path. The Skaarj's anger peaked a little more; if there was anything he hated, it was being ignored—and where did this Terran think it was going to go, anyway? For all the good its so called 'bravery' was doing, it wouldn't stop him from running it through.

Thoroughly aggravated by now, the Skaarj stalked purposefully towards the short creature, making sure he was in its direct path. He stopped less than a foot away from it and barked, louder than necessary. He was close enough to see that, underneath its torn outer clothing, the Terran's pale skin was coated with blood and bits of green scales. Oddly, they looked like Skaarj-hide…but that couldn't be possible. This tiny _thing _couldn't dispatch a Skaarj of the lowest warrior caste, even if it tried.

The Terran raised its head. There was a large gash on its nearly bald scalp, and a crimson river flowed down its face, rimming its eyes with red. The Skaarj didn't like the look that the Terran was giving him. It was feral, violent. The dark centers of its irises seemed to be ringed with white—

In a second, the Terran had jumped him. Or, rather, jumped _on _him; one of its hands grabbed a tendril of the spiked crests on the back of his head as its feet planted onto his thighs. He reeled backwards, trying to maneuver his Razik blades to intercept his assailant's body, but it moved again, higher up, driving its knees into his chest, yanking his head back with its arm. Roaring in fury, he grabbed one of its legs with a clawed hand, digging his talons into the flesh of its thigh, trying to tear the creature away. Suddenly the muzzle of something cold and hard was pushed between his jaws and a sound like an explosion filled with ears. Immediately following this assault the Terran shoved its face into his neck, closing its teeth around the vulnerable artery bulging between his shoulder and his jawbone. Choking on the blood that was filling his lungs, the warrior finally managed to tear the human off of his body and staggered to his feet. The softskin landed on its feet but dropped to its knees, one hand closed loosely around the handle of her tiny, insignificant, _destructive _weapon.

The warrior staggered, unable to feel anything but the warm stream of blood pulsing out of the tear in his throat. The ground rushed up to meet him as the corners of his vision became hazy and finally blanked out.

_A Terran attacking a Skaarj._ _Unbelievable…._

849 raised herself back onto her unsteady legs, letting her heart slow down before she made any sudden moves. She was swallowing blood, and there was a strange substance filling her mouth; spitting, she realized she had a chunk of the Skaarj's neck still clenched between her teeth. Gazing absently at the Skaarj's carcass, she gave it a savage kick in the gut verifying that it was dead. She then turned her gaze towards the high, rune-covered walls of the temple perimeter, reaching for the translator at her hip so its image input could scan the area. A map flickered onto the emerald screen.

_Sacred Passage, _the label at the top read. _Entrance to the Temple of Chizra._

She blinked as she read the words. _...Chizra? _The name sounded familiar. Perhaps she had heard of its name, many years ago. Yes, she did remember someone telling her about it. She just couldn't remember who.

It didn't look like there was a door anywhere in sight; after patrolling the wall, running one hand over the sides of the entire structure, she couldn't find any means of getting in. She holstered her Enforcer and made her way over to the side of the clear pool that reflected the evening sky above them. After a short pause of staring into the water, she reached into her mouth and wiggled a loose tooth on her bottom jaw. _I must have been chewing on something recently, _she thought, and yanked the canine out of her gums. She flicked the tooth into the still pool of water and watched it float towards the bottom. After a moment a school of biterfish swam hesitantly up to the bloody piece and began nipping at it curiously.

849 narrowed her eyes.

There was a vent at the bottom of the pool. It looked just large enough for her body to fit through.


	11. Raising Cain

First of all, I'm so sorry that this chapter is so late. Things will move much quicker from now on.

Also, I had major problems trying to get this particular segment to work, considering that Harobed was a horrible place to base this part of the story. The only places they could immediately go were Terraniux and the Dark Arena. Bad and badder. The next big landmark in the game is the Temple of Vandora—boring—and the Trench, which would have no significance to the Nali. Anyway, long story short, I'm splitting this up into two chapters, so this might me a little short. Don't worry, though. More is on the way very soon!

(I'll be sure to thank you, right after I shank you, punk. ^_^)

Chapter Eleven: Raising Cain

**Skaarj Mothership**

Compared to most of the Skaarj race, the Warlord—the number that had been assigned to him at his hatching had been rendered null and void since his promotion to this classification—was a level-headed and mellow creature. Meaning, of course, that he slaughtered his victims quickly and almost painlessly, and he sometimes listened to the excuses of those who had transgressed his orders. Sometimes.

He ruffled out his expansive, leathery wings as the lift that he was standing on dropped lower and lower into the bowels of the Skaarj mothership, taking him to the center nest, where the Source guarded her expansive nest of eggs. Recently, he had been getting troubling transmissions from the WarMasters under his command. Nali were rebelling against their masters, deliberately tampering and destroying Skaarj equipment, forming resistance groups in hundreds of villages, and, overall, being disobedient. He thought it was rather humorous how the Nali were expressing resistance, but some of the WarMasters had put in formal complaints, and one of the Warlord's more tedious tasks was to carry these formal requests to the Queen. He hoped that she would agree to the request of annihilating the Nali race altogether. The prospect of carrying out that task practically made the WarLord salivate with excitement.

When the lift shuddered to a halt, he stepped off and descended the platform that carried him out of the small lift antechamber and into a huge, expansive room that was shrouded in near-darkness. The platform seemed to hover on the shadows, but the Warlord knew that if a light were to suddenly burst the room into illumination, he would be able to see that the walls, stretching above and below him for hundreds of feet, would be covered with a kind of sticky green incubation sap that held the eggs until they were ready to be hatched. At the very bottom, the Mothership opened up into the very earth of Na Pali, so that the pupae could exit the huge structure and begin their terror of Na Pali from the earliest stages of their lives, telepathically compelled to do so by the Queen.

The Warlord had reached the iris hatch that separated this huge incubation room from the laying room. He waited for the door to open completely before he straightened his back and entered the room to have a quiet—and hopefully rapid—discussion with his leader.

The laying room was small and circular, with four emerald green energy beams blooming up from exhaust vents in the floor, being fed into the core of the Mothership directly above them. Between these four feeds of energy, on a raised platform in the middle of the room, the Skaarj Queen rested on her haunches, her horned head turned in the direction of the open door that the Warlord had come through. Her body, cut and lean and covered with green scales, was shrouded in the cool darkness of the hatching room, so the only indication that she was present in the room were her glowing eyes, piercing in their intensity and ethereal in their luminescent color.

_State your business._ The voice that echoed in his head was silky and confident; her question was punctuated by a short, audible hiss from her throat. To any other Skaarj she would have requested an identification number, but, seeing as there was only one Warlord at any given time during a Queen's reign, she forewent this formality.

Taking her acknowledgement of his presence as an invitation inside, the Warlord stepped away from the doorway and approached the reclining Queen. When he was a few paces away from the platform that she was on, he dropped to one knee, put one hand on his chest, and began delivering his message.

"It is the general complaint from many of our commanders that the Nali race is becoming difficult to completely subjugate. Many are questioning the responsibility of employing Nali to work in the Tarydium mines, as some of them have been destroying the equipment. Their deaths do not pay for the damages already done."

The Queen stirred, her massive tail twitching from side to side. _The fact that the Nali have the time to tamper with our facilities indicates incompetence on the part of the Skaarj that are watching over them. Incompetence is a symptom of weakness and that shall not be tolerated._

"That is well understood," the Warlord persisted, not liking her indifferent answer, "but there are so many Nali and so few Skaarj that it is difficult to keep watch on all of our prisoners. Surely there is a way to cut down on the numbers of the Nali to make it easier for our warriors to do their assigned tasks. Kill more of them, perhaps—."

_This constitutes lackluster leadership_! The Queen's rattling growl made the Warlord wince. Normally it would've taken a while of cajoling for her to become irritable. Something must have made her upset already. _The Nali cannot think for themselves and will follow whatever force is most powerful. Our scouts and warriors must be acting like complete fools for any of the Nali to dare attempt resistance efforts._

The Warlord arched his wings, stretching them to their full height. His knees were beginning to ache. "There has been talk of increased Terran activity on the Surface," he said quietly, immediately recoiling as the Queen's angry squeal echoed through the room.

_Terrans_?! The Queen's slender arm shot out of the darkness; her tri-fingered hand wrapped around the Warlord's body, effectively pinning him to the ground. One of her talons pierced the sensitive skin of his wing. _This is the problem—you think only of killing your Nali playthings instead of considering how dangerous the Terrans are to our reign here. Have you any idea of how their presence threatens our very existence?_

"Your orders are being followed," the Warlord said helplessly, trying to placate the Queen's anger. His first hunch had been right—something had happened to upset her. "All Terrans are to be killed upon sight."

_You say that._ The Queen's voice cut through his consciousness like a hot knife, but she lifted her heavy arm from his chest and withdrew further into the darkness. _Yet your generals cannot keep their Nali slaves under control. _

The Warlord composed himself for a moment, and then dropped his chin to his chest. "You are right, of course," he said shortly. He heard her settle back into her reclined position and met her gaze as she regarded him with a haughty glint in her powerful eyes.

_Reinstate a new legion of generals. I want all those who made any formal complaints disposed of_. She scraped her talons on the platform she reclined on, tilting her head at the sound.

_I will reissue the orders about treatment of the Nali and the Terrans alike. I shall not tolerate weakness. _

Harobed Village

"I still think you're out of your mind," Happy said, sitting on the stoop of Baran's doorstep, resting her chin on the back of her hand. Norianna was stalking back and forth in front of her, swinging the Flak Cannon absently in one hand, her fingers clamped firmly around the trigger. Little by little the villagers of Harobed had trickled out of their houses and were huddled in shivering bunches in front of the two Terrans, fearfully awaiting whatever the strange newcomers were deciding to do with them.

"I'm just glad that I knew where the war party was storing this piece of junk," Norianna said in a low voice, hoisting the weapon up to rest on her shoulder. Happy sighed and watched as her breath misted and rose into the sky.

"They're taking too goddamn long," Norianna hissed between clenched teeth. Her cellmate raised her eyebrows.

"It's probably because half of them are running away in fear," she said, trying to sound careless. Her voice came out wooden, heavy. Norianna stamped her foot.

"That's what they should be doing—and instead, I have to threaten to kill them just to get them to come outside and listen to me. Ridiculous."

Happy said nothing, content to be under an open sky again, even if the temperature was below freezing. The metal of her 'prosthetic' limb was comfortably cool against the infectious skin that it had been connected to. She stretched her legs out in front of her, feeling the frosted grass on her ankles. How long had it been since her feet had touched anything except concrete? How long had it been since she had heard the fall of rain on a roof instead of the spilling of blood, or the sound of murmuring voices over dinner, rather than desperate screams for mercy?

Oh, how she hated Shas. Her mouth turned downwards in a grimace as her mind replayed all of the horrendous things he had done to her—every single scar on her body, every single tear she had shed, every single sleepless night and drop of blood and recurring nightmare she had endured was because of him—!

Norianna turned her head over her shoulder. Happy was tearing up handfuls of mud and grass with her good hand; her eyes had glazed over and her mouth was working strangely, as if she was talking to herself. "Hey," she said sharply. "Happy, focus!"

Happy didn't stop; the other Terran stepped quickly over, knelt down, and gripped her chin forcefully in her hand. "Stop it!" she hissed.

The younger girl's eyelashes fluttered; she finally fixed her dull gaze on Norianna's face. The latter smiled weakly. "You with me?"

Happy blinked. "There's someone standing behind you."

"Ch'abar!"

Norianna quickly rose to her feet. A Nali woman towered in front of her, her four hands balled into fists, eyes narrowed. She took another hesitant step towards the two Terrans, deliberately drawing too close to Norianna's body. The translator at her hip beeped; Norianna glanced at the green screen and saw that the words _let go_ were scrawled across the screen.

"Baran!" she shouted, scanning the crowd for the one Nali that she had grown to recognize. She saw him squeezing through the scattered bystanders to get closer to her. His face was set in a stony grimace, but at least he had followed orders. He stood next to the Nali woman and crossed his arms.

"I have done as you asked," he muttered stiffly. "All of the villagers are present to hear what you have to say."

Norianna reached down and clasped Happy's hand. "C'mon, stand up," she coaxed, pulling her to her feet. "Now stand here and look regal. Well," she stuck her lower lip out as she swept her eye up and down her cellmate's form, "try and…just stand."

She unhooked the translator from her belt and began dictating to it. "Citizens of Harobed, I stand here with your Messiah."

The Nali were silent, swaying on their feet. Baran made a frustrated noise. Inwardly, Norianna gave an exasperated sigh. Weren't the Nali supposed to be a little more…enthusiastic about this topic? She was heralding the savior of their planet, after all; even though said savior was a little emaciated and abused and mentally unstable.

_Hell_, she thought. _Is this thing even turned on_?

"Baran, are they getting this?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth, trying to look as confident as she could in front of the sea of blank stares she was getting from the four-armed aliens.

"Yes," was the stiff reply. "I have to wonder, though, why you saw fit to drag us out here in the freezing weather. Is this really worth the threat of death?"

Norianna snorted. "I'm no fan of subzero temperatures either, but I figure that standing out here for a few minutes is better than getting split open by Razik blades." As the translator played back her retort, the Nali villagers shuffled nervously. "Yes, that's right. I'm talking about the Skaarj who are, at this very moment, playing seek-and-find in your chapel. Actually, it's more like 'find and become increasingly violent'. They've got your stash of weaponry and they are pissed, to put it mildly. If you couldn't guess, they want to kill you. All of you."

Baran shot a glance to the Mother, who stood serenely by the well in the middle of the village. She did not return his gaze.

The woman continued, cranking up the volume on the translator. "I am a handmaiden to your Messiah. Your Messiah has decreed that you must all evacuate the village immediately."

All heads shifted to Happy, who immediately shrank behind Norianna like a shy child. "What are you _doing?_" she hissed. "I thought you were going to tell them that we were all gonna make a run for it!"

"I am," Norianna said out of the corner of her mouth. "Just shut up and play along.

"Verily!" she continued, waving her arms in the air, "so hast thine Messiah decreed it to be so!"

"Good _night_," Happy muttered under her breath. "Way to ham it up there."

Her cellmate, though, looked to be thoroughly enjoying herself. "The question lies in whether or not you will be loyal to the Messiah or not, good citizens of Harobed! Will you stay here and die, or will you follow your chosen protector to a better place—a safer place—a haven for both you and the Messiah to gather your forces and resist the Skaarj?"

There was a slight murmuring in the crowd—too slight for Norianna's tastes. She turned to Baran, whose expression was one of slight amusement and disbelief.

"Do you really believe all the things that you're saying? Do you really believe _any of us _believe what you're saying?"

The blonde woman shot him a furious look. "You are an idiot if you can't see what I'm trying to do," she said harshly. "I don't care if they think she's the Messiah or not, but they need to get the fuck out of this village, and fast. And, oh by the way, you told me that they _did _think that she was the Messiah. Stop contradicting yourself and help me. Tell them something—anything—but they need to leave _now_!"

Baran looked out at the group of Nali huddled against the cold. They looked like a crop of plants, withered and brown but still trembling with life against the harsh wind. He would be asking them to leave all that they had ever known and loved, forcing them to flee into an unknown future with nothing but a false prophet as their protection. He didn't even know where the woman expected them to go. He turned his head to look at the chapel.

Certain death waited for them in Harobed. Uncertain death waited for them outside of the village walls. But he had threatened the Mother with his own departure not three hours ago. This is what he had wanted.

"Make up your _mind!" _

Happy put her hand on Norianna's arm. "Let's see if I can help."

She limped out in front of the crowd and raised her arms; the sunlight gleamed off of her metal limb, forcing all Nali eyes to dwell on her starving form. "I have come through Skaarj torture alive; they cannot harm me. I have been blessed and those who follow me will be blessed likewise. I shall protect you and lead you to safety."

The Nali woman who had confronted Norianna dropped to her knees in front of the Terran. "I'm with you," she said; when the translator played back her message, Happy smiled.

"Anyone else?"

Baran rubbed his eyes. "Diaba…."

Slowly, each Nali citizen repeated Diaba's statement. Norianna sighed with relief and nearly collapsed. The hand that held the Flak cannon trembled visibly. Baran walked up next to her.

"That worked well."

Norianna exhaled shakily. "You people are impossible. All my oration and they fall at Happy's feet when she points to the sky. Belief is a hell of a thing." After a minute of collecting herself, Norianna stood up. "Okay. Let's do this. Happy, come here please."

Happy turned from the throng of Nali who were kneeling to her. "Hm?"

"I want you to take this." Norianna held out the Flak cannon. Happy eyed it suspiciously.

"Are you joking? I couldn't carry that thing with these hands, much less operate it. You carry it."

"Then Baran can carry it." Norianna thrust the heavy weapon into the Nali's chest. "You're going to need it a lot more than me."

The smaller Terran's eyebrows furrowed. "What are you talking about? We're sticking together."

Norianna laughed, tossing her head. "You're so silly! What, run off with a village full of Nali and not expect the Skaarj to pursue? Somebody's got to stall for time; it might as well be me."

"No. You never told me about this."

Norianna put her hands on her hips. "Happy, there's a lot of things that I never told you about because we simply don't have the _time. _With every second you waste fighting me, that's another second you're giving the Skaarj to catch up with you. I promise I'll meet up with you."

"But you haven't even told me where we're supposed to go!"

Norianna smiled broadly. She swung her arm up and around, pointing at the rock face behind her. Happy was confused until she drew her gaze up and over the mountain. Far, far in the distance, jutting proudly into the coal grey clouds, was a spire of rock that looked to be at least a mile and a half high. It was lean and narrow and stood out starkly against the dusk horizon, a monument to the earth from whence it came.

"There. I want you to go there."

"The _Sunspire?_" Baran spluttered. "It's a week's worth of walking away!"

"Look, it's the only recognizable landmark on this entire planet, okay? I'm less concerned about your safety as I am with you all getting lost. You all are the native dancers of this planet; you just need to follow someone around because God knows what religion tells you to do so. Just go to the Sunspire with Happy—that's all I'm asking you."

"A wise decision."

All eyes turned towards the Village Mother, who was approaching Norianna with a slight smile on her face. It took Norianna a moment to realize that she had spoken to them in rather good English. Baran seemed flabbergasted.

"When did you learn the Terrans' language?" he asked her as she came to a stop in front of the Terran. The Mother looked at him and snorted. "What are you talking about? I was a priestess of Velora in my younger days. I taught English to your brother. Now then," she said, turning to Norianna, "what you are proposing to do is very brave, but very foolish. The Sunspire is indeed a symbol of hope for the Nali, but I fear that it has been overtaken by the Skaarj. We have not gotten word from the monks there for several weeks."

Norianna's face fell. The Mother put two of her hands on the woman's shoulders. "But fear not, brave one. If the Sunspire is indeed overrun by those monsters, there is a village at the foot of the Sunspire whose inhabitants will warn you beforehand. The Skaarj are relatively disinterested in our simple villages, so the Messiah and the Harobed villagers should be safe there."

"D'ja hear that? Happy, this is perfect. I'll dash off and give Shas some of his own medicine and then we can meet up at this Sunspire place. It's only a week. You'll do fine. I promise."

Happy looked miserable. "What will you use to fight off Shas, though? You're giving the Flak cannon to me."

Norianna laced her fingers underneath her chin and batted her eyelashes. "My incredibly sexy looks. What else?"

The Village Mother reached into the folds of her ceremonial robe. "You are selfless, young lady, but I believe that you will be needing a more powerful weapon."

She presented a sleek, blue-tinted weapon to Norianna with all four of her hands, bouncing it lightly in her fingers. "I do not know what it is called, but it is capable of dealing immense damage with just one shot. I saw a Terran operate it once. The detonation was enough to kill three Skaarj warriors. I bestow it upon you. Use it well."

Norianna picked it up, lurching a little when she overestimated how heavy it would be. "It's so light," she breathed, turning it over on its side. "ASMD. Hm. I wonder." She choked on a bit of laughter. "Reminds me of a funny phrase from a movie I once saw…thank you, ma'am. Very much."

She turned to Happy. "We're out of time, oh cellmate of mine. Would you come here and give me a hug? I'm about to go run a suicide mission."

Happy stubbornly shook her head. "I'm not going to hug you if you're going to die."

Norianna was already backing towards the chapel. "C'mon, c'mon, you're wasting time."

Happy took several tentative steps towards Norianna, wrapped her in a quick hug, then pulled away and slapped her full across the face. "I _hate_ you! You're leaving me to die!"

Norianna brought her hand up to her cheek and then sighed, turning her head towards Baran. "Please, Baran, protect her. Keep her safe until I get back.

"And you," she said, chucking Happy under the chin, "try not to get raped by any more lizards. And take this." She dropped the translator into Happy's limp hand. "We'll see each other again."

Without another word, Norianna turned on her heel and fled. Happy watched as Norianna ran nimbly up the hill, her cloak snapping against her heels with the weight of the wet grass. She paused only briefly at the entrance gate to Harobed's chapel and then disappeared behind the crumbling brick wall.

Happy struggled to swallow her rising panic, turning instead to meet the moon-eyed gazes that some eighty or so Nali were fixing upon her. Baran's face was unreadable but somehow reassuring; his was the only familiar face in the crowd. She felt shaken and alone and Norianna had only been gone for thirty seconds. She fidgeted a moment, trying to think of something to say—Norianna had done all the talking; she was so confident and cool about the whole thing. She bit her lip and looked helplessly at the chapel behind her. Baran cleared his throat.

"Go?" he asked, almost timidly.

She felt stinging behind her eyes. Go—and leave Norianna behind? Reflexively beginning to shake her head, she caught the sounds of a scuffle nearby—and then the distinctive roar of a wounded Skaarj. A wave of panic passed through the crowd.

She nodded to Baran, who begrudgingly bent his head in return.

She held the translator against her chest with her false arm and reached out to grab Baran's hand. Wordlessly she pulled him through the crowd, heading down the slow slope of the hill away from the chapel. "Tell them to follow me," she said shortly, preparing to use the translator if he didn't understand her request. Baran, seeing her fumbling with the machinery, reached over with one of his free arms and removed it from her tenuous grasp. "They already are."

Happy turned her head over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she took in the sight of some eighty or so Nali citizens falling into step behind her. The looks on their faces never wavered from wide-eyed fear, but they still followed her. She swallowed hard and yanked her hood over her forehead to avoid meeting any of their eyes. What had she gotten herself into? What had Norianna gotten her into? Did she honestly expect Happy to keep this huge group together? What if they were picked off by Skaarj scouts? What if they were spotted and captured? What if Norianna—

"Happy. You're shaking."

The false Messiah clenched Baran's hand tighter. "It's the cold."

She breathed deeper. If she didn't do this, then she could be condemning these innocent people to death, as well as risking Norianna's disappointment if they met up again. Happy winced at her own thoughts. _When _they met up again.

Awkwardly holding the Terran's hand, Baran looked around; he noticed with a start that the Village Mother was standing serenely by the well, watching them all depart. "Aren't you coming with us?" he shouted back to her.

She raised her hand in silent farewell and made her way back into her cabin, which was glowing from within with cheerful golden light from the fire.

The smell of the woodsmoke followed them out of the village.


	12. Solitary Silhouettes

Any kind of in-game temple with water totally sucks. That is all.

Chapter Twelve: Solitary Silhouettes

She moved like a breeze through shifting walls and over gold-plated flooring, slipping in and out of rooms deep within the Ceremonial Chambers of the Temple of Chizra like someone who had been within the ancient building hundreds of times before. She plunged into watery catacombs through the large hexagonal openings in the floor and moved with the efficiency of a fish, twisting around heavy sunken barrels and slipping past the serpentine creatures that paddled above her like birds in a liquid sky. When she emerged from the jade green waters she barely changed her pace; she pulled herself up and over the edge of the flooring, cascading with moisture, and was up and running within seconds, shaking water out of her Enforcer. It proved to be relatively trustworthy even when waterlogged; she had looked for a drier route through the deep tunnels but had been forced to go swimming several times. The effects of the water on the other weapons that she had gathered on her explorative journey worried her more, though; thus far she had four weapons strapped to her back, legs, and arms but had only used her Enforcer for fear of one of the more complex arms backfiring on her.

No matter, though. She was still in one piece and she was generally sure of where she was headed.

Generally.

She came upon a golden door that took up nearly half of an entire mold-and-moss covered wall; she had to squint against its brilliance. A face, ancient and familiar somehow, grinned at her from the center panel. She put her hand on it and pressed; the door creaked open, causing her to wince and start a little at the sound. She desperately tried to be silent at every opportunity; it seemed that every bloodthirsty denizen of this place came at her if she even so much as sneezed. She reloaded her Enforcer, took a breath, and dashed into the room beyond, casting quick glances to her right and left before she proceeded any further. The small passageway she had fled into had spit her out into a two-level room; off to her left was some kind of firelit antechamber while a wooden ramp led up to a smaller golden door on her right. The room looked empty as far as she could tell; she noticed with more than a little irritation that there didn't seem to be any healing items in the area. She put her free hand to her side, wincing a little as her palm came into contact with the acid burn she had received from a particularly nasty Slith that had ambushed her earlier in the temple.

"Bati d'vaar!"

849's head snapped to the side, her piercing eyes looking in the direction from where the call had come from. If she had been any more on edge her Enforcer would've found its target by now. Several unfortunate Nali who had done this same gesture of greeting had experienced a very different response from her; she had accidentally gotten a shot through once or twice before she could stop her arm from moving. A Nali priest, his body striped with red, blue, and gold paints stepped out of the left antechamber. He held one finger to his lips and padded up the ramp, beaconing her to follow. She trailed him tentatively, walking backwards and training her Enforcer on the floor below them. If there was anyone up ahead, the Nali would panic and warn her.

The priest stepped onto the platform at the top of the ramp and beaconed to a dark corner off to the side. 849 caught a dim gleam of metal—ammunition clips. She planted her foot on the platform and was about to lower her arm when a screech of metal from the passage she had just come through warned her of the trap she had just walked into. At the first pounding of footsteps the Nali priest fled into the shadowed corner where the ammunition was and cowered against the wall.

The Terran, however, remained on the platform, watching with an unreadable expression on her face; as soon as the trio of Skaarj warriors rushed into the open her eyes flashed with fury. A perceptible change came over her body; within the span of a few heartbeats she had holstered her Enforcer and had shrugged an ASMD shock rifle into her hands. She braced the weapon over her shoulder as her fingers found the trigger. Her eyes tracked two of the Skaarj; they spotted her and leapt towards the platform she was standing on.

Her body seized up; her fingers fluttered over the trigger, setting the firing mode to its alternative capability. A blue sphere of energy exploded out of the shock rifle, careening towards the pair of Skaarj practically climbing over each other to get to the Terran. A second later the firing mode of the rifle was back on primary fire and she fired a second time, aiming at the ball of blue. The shock beam struck the plasma an instant before the Skaarj could be hit with the deadly beam; the resulting explosion caught both of the lizard men in its wake and thoroughly destroyed them, flinging their entrails against the walls and splattering 849 with their blood.

She barely had time to wipe the offending liquid out of her eyes before the third Skaarj was on her. It dove forwards, catching her midsection and sending her flying back into the wall. She dimly saw the shock rifle skitter off the platform and disappear on the lower floor. Her breath had been knocked out of her but she couldn't waste time being in pain—the warrior was coming. She rolled to her feet and barely avoided getting decapitated by the Razik blades that the Skaarj was slashing at her with. She tripped while diving out of the way of another blow and tumbled down the ramp, landing on her stomach. The Skaarj took a flying leap off of the platform and landed directly on top of her, its clawed feet crushing the stones on either side of her body. It raised its voice in a roar and drew back its arm, the firelight gleaming on its blades. Sweeping its arm down with enough force to put gouges in solid marble, the Skaarj aimed the Razik blades at the center of 849's back, anticipating a clean cut all the way through her body.

The blades shredded the back of 849's shirt and immediately snagged on something. After several moments of trying to free its weapon from the Terran's back, the warrior reached down with its free hand and tore the rest of prisoner's top away, realizing with a snarl that his blades were embedded in a thick casing of upper body armor.

849 took advantage of the alien's hesitation to release the body armor's snaps from her shoulders and scramble away. With one set of blades out of commission, the Skaarj wouldn't have nearly as many chances to kill her. It was just the break she was looking for. She was on her feet in a moment and was halfway across the room before the Skaarj could react to her. It aimed its unencumbered arm in her direction and discharged two electrical beams into her body, recoiling in surprise when the only response it got from the Terran was a soft cry of pain and a subsequent firing of her own weapon into its shoulder. Multiple more bullets peppered into its scales and it growled, flinging the trapped body armor away with a flick of its wrist. It was preparing to lunge into her again when it realized she was running directly towards him. He dodged easily to the side, turning a somersault in the air and landing with one knee bent. The Terran backpedaled and brought her weapon up again, firing before the Skaarj could get its bearings. A few clicks later and the gun sounded empty. The Terran and the warrior met each others' eyes; 849 then lobbed the Enforcer at her enemy. The Skaarj brought its hands up to bat the projectile away, succeeding in the task but losing 849 in the process. Leaping to its feet, it turned in a quick circle, extending both Razik blades and uttering a warning growl.

The warm thrum of the shock rifle alerted him to the woman's position; she had run for her other gun and was now training its sights on her. The Skaarj anticipated its death; it had misjudged this Terran, and she had surprised it with her ability to survive this far, but she would not be alive for long, even if it had failed its task. Its brothers would see to that.

It cocked its head to the side. Its code of honor dictated that it should die fighting.

Moments later, a blue-white explosion erased its existence, and 849 ascended the ramp dripping with blood. She passed the still-terrified priest and met its eyes for a moment.

Her smile chilled the Nali to the bone.

---

Happy was unused to the quiet. Even though she used to relish in the blessed and rare silence of the Dark Arena when she was a captive, Norianna's sometimes unceasing conversation had distracted her from the seemingly hopeless situation they were both mired in. Without her friend by her side, Happy felt as alone and vulnerable as she had been when she was first captured by the Skaarj, even with the company of the Harobed villagers. Baran had long since fallen into a brooding silence, and none of the other villagers dared to speak with the Messiah. They followed her like sheep, every once in a while requesting that Baran ask the Messiah to stop so they could gather food or to answer nature's call. They never dared to ask Happy to stop, though; she had to decide that by herself. She looked at her infected arm. She had set a schedule for their travels but was tempted to speed up the process; she felt a fever spiking in her head and was breathing in short pants that she knew weren't caused by exhaustion. If Norianna were here, she'd probably tell Happy what she already knew—that her infected arm had given her sepsis and in a matter of hours or days, Happy would be dead. She just hoped that she could last long enough to get to the Sunspire. If not….

"Baran," she said, looking up at the clouds. It was midmorning and the weather had warmed considerably since their descent from the mountain village. They were now following a range of grassy hills that blocked them from both the Velora Temple and the Terraniux installation; Happy was in no humor to go traipsing around through Mercenary territory. Shas had often complained of Terraniux as being a burden to the Skaarj, but even so, Happy wasn't exactly sure that the enemy of her enemy was her friend.

"What?" Baran quickened his step to walk beside the Terran. Happy cleared her throat before continuting.

"If I die along the way, what will you do?"

Baran groaned. "Don't say that."

"I mean it," Happy said, giving him a serious look. "I'm leaking pus out of my elbow here and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. I don't want you to carry my body all the way to the Sunspire, but if Norianna shows up and I'm not with you all, I'm afraid she'll be upset."

The Nali shifted the Flak cannon he was carrying to his upper left hand. "Let's worry about that when we get to it," he said wearily. Happy turned her head away from him and was quiet for a moment.

"Do you have a family?" she asked.

After a short pause, Baran said, "I have a brother that I assume is still living. I haven't seen him for months. All the others are dead."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Another uncomfortable silence. Baran fidgeted. "Do you have a family?"

"An adoptive one, yes."

At Baran's questioning look, Happy laughed. "I mean, the people who raised me weren't my real parents. They were people who were unrelated to me that pretended I was their child."

Baran nodded thoughtfully. "That is an interesting custom."

"Yeah," Happy murmured, her mind wandering to revel in memories that seemed to belong to another person, another lifetime, another world. Her mother, smelling of vanilla and rosin, setting down her 'cello to scoop Happy up in her arms and whisk her out to the backyard in summertime to catch fireflies and dance in the warm wind. Her father, playing hide-and-seek with her in their living room, pretending he didn't see her hiding behind the chair until he seized her and tickled her until she collapsed in a fit of tears. Lunchtime in the park, sitting on a blue-checked blanket as they watched the synthetic grass tremble in the breeze generated by the wind turbines that lined the outskirts of her hometown. Bedtime, after getting kisses on the forehead, watching the fiber-optic lights on her ceiling flash as they put on a light show of stars and comets and constellations for her to watch. _I want to work on a starship_, she had told them she was older. _I want to see all these stars close up. For real. I want to fly. _

She had been so thrilled to get a job on the ISV-Kran.

"I can still see their faces when I told them goodbye," Happy said, breaking out of her memories, wiping sudden tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "But I can't remember what they told me. I just want to remember their voices. That's all."

They walked on in silence. At around midday Happy gave the signal for them to settle down and take a break; immediately their carried stores of redfruit and wineskins were brought out. Most of the group sat a ways away from Happy and Baran, sometimes casting a fearful—but respectful—glance at their Messiah. Happy figured it was for the best that she keep her distance from the crowd. She didn't want them to notice her deteriorating condition. She took the offered redfruit that Baran held out to her and held it to her lips for a moment, inhaling its scent. She hadn't eaten since the day before but the smell of the healing substance was cloying, and she swallowed hard and lowered her hand.

Baran sat next to her and ate in silence for a few minutes before he noticed that she was crying again. "What is wrong?"

Happy worked her fingers around the plump fruit. "I don't think I can do this."

"Do what?"

"This." Happy gestured to the group of Nali. "This whole Messiah thing. Leading them to God knows where when I don't even know where I'm going. They think I'm this goddess person and put all their trust in me. What if I let them down? What if they all die because of me?"

Baran chewed and swallowed. _I was wondering the exact same thing. _"As I said before. They will die for you."

Happy looked at him. "But you won't."

"I do not believe you are the Messiah. I do not believe in any divine creature. I believe what I see, and I see a dying race, a dying culture, and a dying planet. These cannot be saved by one life alone. It will take the hearts of many to save Na Pali, but since the hearts of many are turned to the 'warrior princess from the stars', this will not come to pass." Baran clenched his hands. "If I could have persuaded them otherwise, you wouldn't have this burden on your shoulders. My people are stubborn. We are stubborn and we are cowardly. It is shameful to think about."

The Terran smiled weakly and closed her eyes. "I don't think you are cowardly. Your village took me in even though they knew the law that the Skaarj established. Standing up to the Skaarj is a very brave thing to do." She frowned. "I know I couldn't do it."

Baran caught himself looking at Happy's prosthetic arm. "How long have you been their prisoner?"

The wind sang through the grass, blowing wispy clouds over the sun and causing shadows to dance on the hills. The second sun was beginning to set, casting the land with a warm golden hue.

"…I don't know," Happy said softly. "Far too long." She sighed drew her knees up to her chest. "For the record, I don't think I'm the Messiah either. I know there are humans on this planet but I highly doubt any of them are in the mindset to save Na Pali either. Except for Norianna."

"Your friend is…spirited." Seeing Happy hugging her knees, shaking, Baran reached out and draped one of his arms around her shoulders. "She will make it through. We shall make it through. Do not lose heart. They believe you are the Messiah," he whispered encouragingly, gesturing to the throng of villagers behind him, "and you are stronger than you know. You may not be the savior of Na Pali to me, but you are the savior to them. Play the part for them. Here, now. You shall prevail."

Happy raised her head and smiled at the Nali sitting next to her. "Yeah," she sniffed. "Thanks. I'll try."

To prove her resolve, she took a bite of the redfruit. It nearly made her gag.

After a half-hour of relaxing, Happy moved the group off again, keeping them between the hills to keep a low profile. She reasoned there had to be at least a few Skaarj to protect the Nali from. Their good luck couldn't possibly last for too much longer. It was already day five of their journey and they hadn't run into a single major problem—aside from general hunger and exhaustion and her own impending death.

The suns had long since set when Happy finally noticed that the group was lagging considerably, and she gave the signal to stop. The terrain had become a bit more rocky; they had obviously made some vertical progress and were now looking down at a sloping valley on one side and a group of craggy peaks blocking their opposite flank. Happy watched the Nali as they broke into groups of ten and went to work building fires and setting out places to sleep. They did everything with a kind of easy silence; they seemed carefree, trusting themselves in the hands of their warrior princess. She could see them moving like dim ghosts in the gloom of twilight; she hoped they'd picked a discreet enough spot to spend the night. Having eight fires blazing away in the darkness was less than stealthy.

She shuddered and put her hand to her forehead. The fever was getting worse. Suddenly the thought of curling up in front of a blazing fire didn't seem all that negative. She started towards one of the groups when a ruddy light in the sky caught her eye. For one terrifying second she thought that it was a scout ship; her thundering heart only relaxed when she realized the light wasn't moving. They hadn't been spotted.

Furrowing her eyebrows, Happy scanned the sky for the source of the light. The moon was half-concealed, but its ruddy tint couldn't be reflected down through such thick cloud cover. Besides the light seemed to be shining upwards, emanating from an area about a mile away. Another Skaarj installation?

She cast a furtive glance towards the groups of Nali, and then began making her way up the slope that led to a few small rocky jags no taller than she was. The incline wasn't steep, but halfway up, she had to pause to catch her breath. Hearing footsteps following her, she called down, "Baran, come with me to see where this light is coming from."

"I would rather help you back to the camp," the Nali said stiffly. "You're burning up."

"I just want to see what that light is from," the Terran said. "Now help me get over these rocks."

The two made their uneasy way over a few loose ledges and reached the peak of the slope with more than a little difficulty. Happy made her way around one of the boulders at the edge and Baran followed close behind her. He was more than a little surprised at where they found themselves.

The edge that they were standing on dropped off in a direct nosedive to the bottom of a massive trench in the earth, a quarter of a mile wide and almost as deep. The rich smell of churned dirt still wafted up into the air, but the damage had long since been done; a few patchy weeds were growing out of the nearly vertical slope to the bottom. The soil was unnaturally smooth, as if it had been tamped down by some huge invisible hand. He looked from side to side. On one end of the trench was a gradual rise back to ground level, while on the extreme opposite end, glowing in the illumination of multiple spotlights and framed by the mountain of earth that it had so rudely buried itself in, was the tail end of a star chariot. Its two rear thrusters looked out over the scar in the ground that its crashing had caused.

Baran looked down at Happy. Her head was draped in its hood, but her entire form was stiff as a board.

"What is this?" he asked her tentatively.

"My dream job," she answered flatly. "I'm back where I started."


	13. Salus

Almost done. Enjoy.

Chapter Thirteen: Salus

The two figures stood at the edge of the ugly scrape of land that terminated at the fallen Inuit Science Vessel _Kran_, listening to the quiet hissing of wind from such a high vantage point. Once Happy had identified the star chariot for Baran, she had closed her lips and had been silent for the better part of a longer space of time than the Nali felt comfortable with. They had been away from the Harobed villagers long enough already.

"The others will be wondering where you've gone," he said.

When Happy didn't answer Baran put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. "You have to come with me now."

To his alarm, she pulled forwards and began uncertainly working her way down the slope. "Where are you going?" he asked, mildly panicked. "What do you think you can do?"

"I see two bodies down there," she replied stonily.

Baran reached out and snagged her arm, holding her in place with two of his hands. "You can't do anything for them," he said, forcing her to look into his eyes. "Your responsibility is with the Nali now."

Happy looked over her shoulder at the crumpled human figures in the dirt below. They had to have been alive until just recently; their forms were whole and the blood that stained the ground around them still looked fresh. "I've got to see, Baran. Those are my crewmembers—_my _people. Besides, they might have something useful we can use."

"Then I'm coming with you."

Happy gently removed her arm from the Nali's grasp. "I'll just be a second, Baran. Besides, you should go back and reassure the others that I'm still alive."

Baran paused. "I'll go back and tell them but then I'm coming to get you. In fact, wait until I tell them and then you can go down."

The Terran relented. "I'll wait. Be quick, though."

Baran disappeared behind the rocks; a few minutes later he returned, with Diaba and another wiry-looking Nali whose name Happy did not know.

"This is Niori," Baran said, answering her unspoken question. "We're going to help you get down the slope. We'll wait for you afterwards."

The four figures made their laborious way down the steep face of the Trench; Baran was practically carrying Happy on his back. When they reached the bottom, the three Nali remained in a tight group while Happy limped over to the two human corpses she had spotted from above. There was the sound of dripping all around her; it had started to rain.

They were both on their backs, arms and legs akimbo, savage bloody holes in their armor where their stomachs were supposed to be. One male, one female; if their faces had been less mangled she would have looked to see if she could recognize either of them. The names that were stitched onto their uniforms—Onatop and Mottobanov—didn't ring any bells in her head. She was, after all, only acquainted with the American division aboard the _Kran. _The male figure clutched a weapon in his hand; Happy, reaching down and prying it loose from his stiff fingers, recognized it as a razorjack. A Skaarj piece of equipment. She cast a fearful glance around and noticed a rock jutting out of the wet dirt a couple of paces in front of her. If she could manage to climb to the top, she would be able to see from one end of the Trench to the other. Scanning the area for danger didn't seem to be such a bad idea.

"Wait here," she told Baran. "I have a feeling we're being watched."

The Nali watched in uncomfortable silence as Happy climbed to the top of the stacked rock on all fours, the razorjack tucked under her arm and her false hand scraping for purchase on the hard granite. When she finally reached the top, she sat down heavily and squinted down the Trench towards the _Kran, _trying to see if there were any sentries coming towards them. The space in front of her was empty, save for a few Gasbags that were floating idly around the searchlights; if the group kept away from the direct lights then the floating two-armed monsters wouldn't be a problem. She sighed, remembering her nights on the ship after the _Kran_'s hard fall. There had been a wave of Titans that had somehow found it amusing to pummel the hull of the ISV ship for hours after the sun went down. From the looks of things, the Titans had moved on; the dented hull was rusting in spots, but had not been broken into.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a strange throbbing in the air. Quickly, she turned her head to look at Baran and the others; they were staring at the sky above them. Baran was holding the flak cannon at the ready. A chorus of heads appeared above the lip of the ledge above them; the rest of the Nali group had come to see what was taking so long.

The Terran's eyes widened as a dark form swooped out of the sky behind the Nali; the clouds flashed orange from the exhaust of the Skaarj scoutship that dropped like a rock and sliced through the rain towards Happy. It made a slow circular descent into the Trench and hovered above the open space behind her, so that Happy and the rock she was standing on separated the Nali from the skimmer. She was thankful for that much, at least.

She heard Baran shout something and come running towards her, but she quickly waved him off. "Put it away!" she hissed at him, pointing to the flak cannon. "If they see it, they'll kill you! Save your ammunition and don't let them see you!"

There was a heavy thump behind her and she swallowed heavily, a worm of terror knotting itself around her chest. She sat on her calves and clutched the razorjack, looking over her shoulder and down at the figure who had just jumped out of the skimmer, landing as gracefully as a swan in the quickly dampening dirt. The Skaarj stood up slowly, his forest green scales gleaming with a hundred different colors, his lion eyes blazing. A taloned hand came forward and gestured towards her. "Happy."

Happy dropped her eyes to the infected skin of her arm. "General."

So Norianna had lost, then. She hadn't managed to kill Shas, and here he was, come to finish the job like a triumphant warlord, his tail twitching, his deep-set eyes shining with the victory that was already playing out in his head. He thought he already won. He had already taken Norianna's life, it seemed, and he had hunted Happy down and was going to finish her off here, in front of all those she was fighting to save.

Happy was suddenly very, very angry.

Norianna had entrusted her with a task—Baran had entrusted his entire village to her care—and now everything she was currently fighting for was in jeopardy. All because of the Skaarj monster standing in front of her. She couldn't let him get away with this. He might have headed her off here but she was not going to let him have his way. Not while she had breath in her body. She had to fight, for the sake of the Nali. Even though she might die here, she had to make a stand.

She got a better grip on the razorjack and planted her bare feet firmly on the slick rock she was standing on. The rain beat down from the heavens and swam down her face as she prepared to face High General Shas-ulhara.

Shas took one step towards the Terran, his foot sinking considerably in the mud. What did she think she was doing? He could smell death on her already and yet she was standing against him—more like wobbling, he corrected himself, looking at the pale, shaking figure perched on the rock. It wouldn't take more than a decent gust of wind to knock her over and yet she was actually threatening his life. He took another step and released his Razik blades, keeping his eyes locked on the girl's. Her whole body quailed with fear but she held her ground. The rain had plastered her hair to her head and the wind was violently whipping her cloak out behind her, almost dragging her backwards. She reached up with her false hand and fumblingly undid the clasp; the heavy cloth was spun away by the gusting storm.

"No more of your tyranny here, Shas." Happy brought the razorjack up and lined it up with the general's neck. "This is where I draw the line."

Shas tilted his head at her words, slowly calculating how close he would need to get to her in order to bring her down with a full-body tackle. The mud was so thick that his ability to jump would be severely hindered. He hummed softly to his human adversary, gesturing with one hand to the breathless group of Nali on the ridge; with his other hand he drew a slow line across his own throat. Happy looked from him to them and back again.

"You don't get it, do you?" She drew herself up on the rock, adjusting her footing as the rain sheeted into her from all sides. "I said _no more_!"

Even Shas was surprised at her shout. No—not her shout; he was surprised by the flash of lightning that pierced the sky above them, illuminating the trench with harsh brightness and punctuating her sentence with a following bellow of thunder. There hadn't been a lightning storm on Na Pali for years; this one was a chance freak of nature. He hunched his shoulders and took another step forwards. Happy responded by discharging a shot from the razorjack that embedded itself in the squelching mud at Shas' feet.

"If you take one more step forwards I won't aim for your legs," Happy warned, knowing that she had made her point even though Shas couldn't understand her speech. "I won't let you kill them. I am their Messiah and I won't let them fall victim to your violence and bloodlust. You shall not conquer them!"

Shas tore his eyes away from the sinking razorjack disk and snarled, raising his arm and firing an electrical beam straight into his Terran opponent. It struck her in the shoulder, sparking out in the rain. To the Skaarj's dismay, Happy merely flinched; a second later she returned fire of her own, catching her tormenter in the stomach and causing him to fall back several paces. The rain washed his blood away almost immediately. The look in his acid green eyes was nearly caustic.

She had him—but not for long. Still training the weapon on Shas' neck with her trembling arms, she turned her head as far as she dared and lowered her eyes to catch Baran's gaze. "Go!" she shouted. "I can't hold him much longer! You must live!"

Baran held out his arms in protest, the flak cannon looking ridiculously huge in his hands. "You are their Messiah! They will not follow me!"

"Tell them it is my wish." Happy chanced a quick glance back at Shas to make sure he wasn't trying anything funny. "I can't let them see me die. You have to go, Baran. All of you. Right now."

Baran glanced at Diaba and Niori. "She's telling us to go."

"Without her?" Diaba breathed. "Nonsense. I am staying with my Messiah."

Beside her, Niori shifted. Baran noticed that he had a heavy cloth bundle draped over one of his arms; he realized that it was Happy's cloak. He must have fetched it from wherever the wind had tossed it. "This will not turn out well either way, Diaba. If this is an order from the Messiah then we had better do as she says."

The female Nali glared at Baran. "You didn't like her from the beginning, Baran. You could be lying to us. She's probably telling us to help her."

"Does she _look _like she wants us to stay?" Baran snarled, pointing at Happy's stiff form on the rock, gleaming wet in the glow of the floodlights surrounding the _Kran. _Another web of lightning wove itself across the sky behind her; she took this moment to spin around and point at the ridge where the rest of the group was hiding.

"_Baran! _You're not going to get another chance! GO!"

Baran shouldered the flak canon and grabbed Diaba's arm, disregarding her attempts to escape his grasp. Niori pinioned her other arms and they all three of them dashed up the slope, fighting the slopping mud that oozed down the side of the trench. Baran heard a snarl and a cry behind him, but he refused to look back. Instead he got a better grip on the firearm in his hand and more forcefully dragged Diaba back above the ridge to the trench. Never mind that he would rather have been carrying someone else to safety. But she had told him to go. And he did.

Happy was right. There was a little bit of a god in everyone. And he had just left his god to the mercy of a skydemon.

No matter what happened to them afterwards, Happy had proven her worth. She had led them this far to salvation.

The sounds that Baran had heard were due to the fact that Happy had slipped off of the rock that she was standing on; the force of her turning had thrown her off balance and she was now on all fours in the mud beside the jutting stone. After a moment of struggling against the mud that was sucking at her skin, she gave up and knelt there, panting heavily, staring up at Shas and the skimmer that loomed above them both like a giant metal bat. The general raised his ropy arm and flashed a signal to the skimmer with his hand; the craft began a slow descent towards the ground. When it settled, its engines humming, two Skaarj hopped out of its open side doors. Grief tore at Happy's throat but she would not let them see her cry, even though she had just failed miserably at leading the Nali to the Sunspire. They hadn't even gotten halfway there and Shas had struck her hopes down again. She couldn't chance a glance behind her to see if the Nali were there, but that was no matter. Shas was talking to the Skaarj next to him. He would send them after Baran and the others. Wolves after a flock of sheep.

_I have to try_, she thought, struggling to stand. _I still have some ammunition left. Maybe if I aim correctly—_

General Shas watched amusedly as his pet wobbled on her stick-thin legs and raised the razorjack once more to eye level. "Which one of us will you aim for?" he purred, holding out his mottled green arms and gesturing to his pilot and his lieutenant. "Would you like us to stand in a line to help you out?"

He was talking to her, the words needling in her ears. She clenched her body against the harsh, wet push of the wind and placed her fingers against the trigger.

The lieutenant was the first to move. He swaggered forwards, his upper body slightly bend, his right arm pulled tight against his body. He was moving in for a punch, then; Happy realized this and began to trot backwards, tripping over her own feet in the mud. Her false arm was not cooperating with her; she couldn't support the razorjack against it as well as she thought she could.

She let out a gagging choke as Shas' lieutenant grabbed her by the throat and the waist and hoisted her above his head. Muscles bunching, the Skaarj hurled her back towards Shas and the pilot, growling in soft mirth as her body crumpled in the mud at Shas' feet.

"Pursue the Nali," Shas said good-naturedly as he nudged Happy with his taloned foot. "I don't think the Terran is going anywhere soon."

Happy said nothing. She had landed on her side and was facing the side of the Trench that the Nali were so precariously perched upon. She dimly saw their nervous shapes shifting against the outline of the low, searchlight-bright clouds above them. Baran was there, and Diaba, too. They hadn't listened to her. They weren't going to leave.

She wanted to be angry with them.

She wanted to scream for help.

A bar of lightning split the sky behind the Nali, and suddenly Happy's eyes flashed from their statue-tall forms to something…some_one_, else, standing on the ridge a few paces from where the Harobed citizens were. The figure was much shorter than the Nali and was bare to the waist, were the remains of a grayish uniform clung to its legs. It supported a rifle against its shoulder with its hands.

A Terran. A _human. _Norianna?

Her revelation was punctuated by the startling report of the rifle being fired.

In front of her, the Skaarj lieutenant took a staggering step forwards and fell face first into the mud, the remains of what had once been his head splattering to the ground. Shas barked in shock. Happy wasted no time and flipped onto her back, flinging up the razorjack and firing at the first figure she saw. The spinning disk caught the pilot underneath the chin and chewed through the Skaarj's head at an angle, halfway decapitating the alien and sending him spinning off to the side, shaking in the throes of death.

General Shas snarled and fired a pair of electrical bolts into his Terran plaything, causing her to cry out and drop the razorjack. He grabbed it off of the ground and brought the weapon heavily down towards her body; he meant to crack her head open with it. Instead, Happy scrambled away and found refuge underneath the watchful scope of the Terran figure making its way slowly down the slope of the Trench and towards them. Shas lowered his arm and settled for crushing the razorjack in his hand. A furious growl rumbled in his throat, and he followed Happy's slowly retreating form. Happy watched him carefully, walking slowly backwards, trying not to laugh.

"You can't kill them by yourself," she said. "My Nali are going to live and you can't stop them."

The human figure was now on the floor of the Trench, walking easily despite the sinkhole that the rain had turned the ground into. As she approached, Happy's uneasy lope was forced to an unsteady stop. Whoever it was, this person was not Norianna. First of all, her uniform was all but shredded, and it was a different color than what Norianna had last worn. Her naked skin glowed white in the places it was not stained livid with blood. Scars raked from the woman's head all the way down to her torso, and a veritable armory of weapons clung to her hips. She stopped when she was nearly a breath away from Happy, and suddenly Happy had the overwhelming urge to back up, despite being faced with one of her own kind, who had just saved her ass from certain death.

The woman's face was exquisitely molded, and her hair certainly must have been beautiful once, even though currently it was only a dark halo of peach-fuzz on her head, but her most striking and fearsome features were her eyes. Large and dark, they were framed with elegant lashes that were clumped together with the rain, but there was an empty gleam in deep in her pupils that sent a chill down Happy's spine. Even though the woman's gaze was directed towards Shas, Happy could feel the woman _staring _at her. She looked back at Shas; he wasn't making any moves either.

The General was trying to force himself to think rationally despite the wrath radiating like a furnace in his head. These Terran idiots had actually forced him into a corner. His first instinct was to go after the Nali, but this new Terran wasn't going to let him go anywhere, and even if, by some miracle, he managed to reach the Harobed citizens and herd them down into the Trench, they wouldn't all fit in the skimmer. His only other choice was to leave. The question was, would he leave with Happy or not? His stomach turned at the thought of letting Happy go, but the armed Terran's sights were still leveled at him, and the look on her face told him she was struggling to hold back her fire.

Suddenly, the woman shouldered the sniper rifle and pulled out a small pistol; the action drew Happy's attention to a tattoo etched on the upper part of the woman's arm. The number 849. Now she recognized the uniform she was wearing. _A prisoner, then? No wonder she looks so ruthless. But we're all prisoners on this planet—why should I be frightened of her? _

"Happy?"

She whirled around. The call, weak as it was, reached her ears like a birdsong. Behind her, she could see the still form of the skimmer, hovering on autopilot mere inches above the ground. And kneeling in the gaping side-door, her hair hanging in waves over her bruised face, was a very cold, a very sore, and a very confused Norianna. For a moment Happy could only stare in slack-jawed awe. Then her face broke out in a smile that rivaled the luminosity of the searchlights.

"You're alive!"

Norianna, one hand cupping the side of her head, gave her a thumbs-up. "Barely," she croaked. "What happened?"

She wanted to tell Norianna everything that had happened—how she had led the Nali this far, how she had made friends with Baran, how she had finally, finally stood up to Shas, how she had killed her first Skaarj, and that perhaps they were going to make it now that this strange prisoner had come out of the blue and saved her. She took one limping step towards her cellmate—

—and was yanked backwards by a rough grip on her soaking hair. She yowled; her good hand flew to her head to slap the offending grasp away, but as soon as her fingers brushed against scales, a brick settled in her stomach. She went limp as a rag doll as Shas swung her body in front of his and snarled something at the human standing in front of them. Happy, squinting through sudden tears, saw the woman's raised arm lower just a fraction. Her other hand went to her hip and she drew forth a rectangular piece of machinery that Happy recognized as a universal translator. After reading the message, the woman cocked her head and let her arm drop to her side.

"Coward." Her voice was a razor in the rain, and her face alit with the furious fire that burned in her eyes. Even so, Shas began to back up, holding his Razik blades against Happy's throat, keeping the weak Terran between his body and the Enforcer. The woman started to follow them, but an angry growl from the general stopped her in her tracks.

"It's okay," Happy called to her when she saw the woman's Enforcer come up. She didn't want to risk getting shot by one of her own kind. "They're safe—that's all I wanted." She pointed behind her to the Nali on the ridge. "Believe me, Shas can't hurt me more than he already has."

The prisoner's face twisted in a sort of anguished grimace, but she dropped her arm and watched as Shas backed into the skimmer, throwing Happy into Norianna and quickly maneuvering the controls to lift the skimmer off of the ground. The vehicle swung wildly and picked up speed; Happy had to hold onto the open door of the skimmer for dear life to avoid falling out of its open sides. Shas swung the skimmer around when he crested the Trench's side and bore down on the trembling group of Nali. At the last second he swerved to avoid them; they were so close that Happy could've reached out and grabbed Baran's hand. Instead, she leaned as far out of the door as she dared and, meeting Baran's eyes, shouted, "Thank you for everything! Please live! For us!"

The skimmer bucked under her and they lifted higher into the air. The last glimpse she got of the strange Terran was a white speck of her skin against the black mud in the Trench. With a sigh, she settled back into the comforting embrace of Norianna's arms. She closed her eyes as her heartbeat slowed in her chest. She didn't need to ask where they were going. She already knew.

Baran watched the black scoutship disappear into the low clouds, Happy's words ringing in his head, the sound of her voice already a memory. A low, throbbing ache settled in his chest. She was gone. The Messiah—no, Happy—was gone. The group of soaking Nali huddled around him, staring at him with wide-eyed fear.

Niori touched his shoulder and held out Happy's cloak. After a moment, Baran took it and fastened the fabric at his own throat. The flak cannon and the translator hung heavily in his hands.

"What now?" Niori asked quietly. Baran looked at the villagers.

"She told us to live," he said. "So we will live. Let us go, then. To the Sunspire."

The group of Nali slowly descended the ridge, away from the Trench. Baran, the last to leave, stared into the muddy scar of land at the pale figure making its way slowly towards the _ISV-Kran_. He called to her, but his voice was caught and carried away by the wind.

It was just as well. The only Terran he wanted to travel with would be dead before nightfall.

***

On the way back to their cage, Norianna told her as much as she could remember—that she had managed to take out six or seven Skaarj with the shock rifle before she had been knocked out. She didn't know why they had kept her alive, but Happy, listening, could already tell that they were in for a nasty surprise.

Currently, they were standing in a barren holding chamber somewhere in the middle floors of the Arena. Happy couldn't stand the look that Shas was giving her. It was like he was sizing her up to be eaten. His eyes flickered from one Terran to another, the talons of one of his hands tapping against the bicep of his arm. The silence in the room was deafening, save for the occasional hiss from one of the Skaarj on the upper floors, coupled with low moans from prisoners in the underground cells. A Nali rabbit whinnied somewhere outside.

"I think we're going to die." Happy barely exhaled her quiet revelation.

Norianna cleared her throat and opened her mouth as if to say something. Shas' head jerked in her direction and he stepped closer to her, the lines of his body tense and quivering. Happy panicked and shoved her cellmate aside, practically leaping forwards, holding her arms out defensively.

"No!" She looked fearfully up at her captor, fighting against the urge to fall on her face and beg for mercy. "Don't hurt her; she didn't know what she was doing; I convinced her to do it!"

She may as well have been reciting the alphabet, for all Shas understood, or cared. His reaction, as she expected, was to raise his arm and backhand her directly across the face, sending her reeling onto her knees, half a room away. Temporarily stunned by the blow, her reflexive move was to attempt to get up, but she felt herself being pinned to the ground, a sensation followed by intense, blinding pain. Shas was stepping on the joint that connected her elbow to the false limb that they had given her. She dry heaved as the pain twisted a knife into her gut. His foot lifted and came down again, effectively squashing the mechanism, sending some of the spokes bouncing away into the darkness as the springs that held them in place were destroyed. The ball-and-socket wrist joint was completely flattened; the 'arm' was now nothing more than scrap metal.

"Get off of her!"

Norianna's voice, followed by a feral snarl; all Happy knew was that the pressure on her arm was released and there was the sound of a vicious scuffle in the small antechamber. She managed to raise her head off of the floor and saw, to her surprise, that Norianna was standing behind Shas, and that Shas was down on one knee, facing away from her. The Terran's hand was driving a thin metal wire deep into the back of Shas' neck. One of the spokes…?

"How…?"

Shas seemed paralyzed to the spot. Norianna forced the wire in deeper and grinned lopsidedly at Happy. "Something I learned from my little friend Attila, back before all this started. Seems that Skaarj don't do too hot when their heads are attacked—and the neck is even more vulnerable. They flail around all the time because their armor isn't that strong. Remember, there's only one place you need to worry about when you're fighting a Skaarj—and if this fucker knows what's good for him he'll stay where he is, and we won't need to worry about his silly little butterknives." To punctuate this sentence, she worked the metal spoke in deeper. "This gives you time to get your silly ass out of here. You know where the doors are in this place. I think you could make it out of here without any of the other guards knowing what's going on—it's not like they'll be looking for _you_, anyway."

Happy struggled to a standing position. "What about you?" she asked cautiously. She had a feeling that she didn't want to hear the answer.

"Oh, me?" Norianna shrugged, flexing her hand, trying to keep her grip on the blood-slippery metal. It was a miracle that she had even struck in the right place to begin with. "I'll stay here until I'm pretty sure you've been gone for a while. I'll be right behind you."

Happy wanted to strangle her. "That's what you said last time," she said. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

Norianna shot her a look that was almost angry. "Of course you are," she said. "You can't just give up and die here. You saw what we managed to pull off at Harobed. If you can get out, and maybe get to another village and spread the word—well, who knows what will happen."

The other girl remained silent. Norianna sighed, exasperated. "Look, I know it seems bad now. But just look at how much faith the Nali had in us. They really believed that you were their Messiah. You! And with an entire village protecting you, hiding you…I bet you could wait this whole thing out and make it offworld when a rescue ship comes."

"The ISV-Kran has been buried in that trench for over half a year," Happy said stubbornly. There isn't going to be any rescue ship."

"But you don't know that," Norianna protested. "And that Nali—Baran—you could go to the Sunspire and find him. He'll take you in. He'll protect you."

Footsteps in the hallway. A sentry was coming. Norianna's eyes instantly filled with panic. "Go!" she whispered harshly.

"Not without you." Happy rushed forwards and wrapped her arms around Norianna's waist, falling to her knees. "I won't leave the Dark Arena by myself."

Norianna tried to twist her body away from Happy's embrace, worming an arm between them and attempting to peel the other girl away. "Get off of me," she said harshly. "I'm doing this for you. Do you think I want to die like this? I'd much rather run away and leave you to fend for yourself, but that doesn't do much for the whole 'hero' persona I have going on. Get out of here before I change my mind. I'm tired of looking at you anyway."

The only reply she received was a tightening of the grasp around her waist. She resisted the urge to knock her cellmate away. "You're such an idiot!" she snapped; Happy looked up and saw she was trying to keep her chin from crumpling. "You bitch and moan about everything when all I try to do is help you! You know that to stay here is death—why don't you get the fuck out already! You're losing your chance and throwing everything that we've worked for to waste!"

"The only thing we've worked for is the hope of survival, and I gave that up when I saw that you hadn't managed to kill Shas. You've killed us, Norianna."

Norianna said nothing.

"And yet," Happy continued, "somehow I'm not scared. I'm not dying alone any more. You saved me from that fate the minute we met. I'm so thankful to you."

"You're already halfway in the grave," Norianna said flatly. "If we don't get the Skaarj version of the electric chair for what we've done, you're condemning me to the same fate that you're so scared of."

Happy met her eyes. "Do I look that bad?"

Norianna wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand and didn't say anything for a few quiet moments. "If you'd have left when I told you…you could've given yourself a few weeks...a month, perhaps, of being outside, in the fresh air, with those damn adorable rabbits."

"I'm tired of running," Happy said. "I'm tired and I'm dying. I don't care about rabbits."

Norianna sniffed. "Before we die, I at least need to know your real name."

Happy closed her eyes and concentrated. She had been called something else, long ago; when the word came into her memory, she sighed. "My name is Mary. First class maintenance engineer Deck-2 Mary Malone." The word felt ancient and lonely on her tongue. Mary Malone did not exist any longer. She had breathed her last when Shas had first laid claim to her.

Norianna smiled. And perhaps she forgot herself for a quick, fatal moment—perhaps she resigned herself to her fate as Happy had done—for she released her grip on the metal spoke in Shas' neck and wrapped her arms around her cellmate.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered in her ear, as Shas' hulking form rose up like a tower behind her, practically shaking with rage. "I don't know what's going to happen to us, and I'm so sorry."

Happy was about to reply when the doors behind her burst open and a pair of Skaarj sentries rushed into the room. They wasted no time in separating the two Terrans; Shas reached down and grabbed his pet's neck, just above her metal collar, lifting her into the air and out of Norianna's embrace, while the other two guards grabbed Norianna by the arms and legs and hoisted her effortlessly into the air.

"No!" _I haven't said goodbye to her yet._ "Let her go!"

The fatally ill Terran surged against Shas' grip on her neck and shoulder, choking as his clawed fingers clamped tighter around her throat. Her vision blurred at the edged with tears and lack of oxygen as her cellmate's form was dragged away. Norianna managed to turn her head halfway over her shoulder and give a sympathetic smile before she disappeared completely.

Happy tried to wrench her neck out of Shas' hand, reaching out with both arms to the dark corridor down which Norianna had been ushered, screaming the other Terran's name until her throat was raw and all that was escaping her cracked lips were short, anguished yelps. She knew exactly where that hallway led to, and Norianna—poor, hopeful, stupid Norianna was oblivious to it all. She didn't realize that all the dark passageways in the facility led to death.

She suddenly felt woozy. Her sudden outburst had drained her of any energy she might have had, and her bony legs crumpled underneath her. Shas relaxed his fingers, and she fell heavily to the damp concrete floor, trying not to gag on the smell of mold as she gasped for air. What she wouldn't give to be back outside, in the cold, under the open sky, with the taste of rain and wind and freedom on her tongue. She had secretly wished that she would die in Harobed, just so she wouldn't have to come back here again. But wishes on Na Pali lasted only as long as hope, and despite what Norianna had said, days or weeks or years ago, Happy just didn't have the heart to hope any more. She had saved her Nali. She didn't have the strength to save herself.

The prisoner felt an impatient tug on the chain that was attached to the collar around her neck, followed by a clicking growl from the Skaarj lord that loomed above her. She understood his wordless command, but she didn't have the strength to comply. Instead, she allowed him to drag her body at the end of her leash, scraping along the ground behind him as he ascended the platform that would spit them both out onto the circular spectator's platform that looked down onto the gladiatorial circle and the iron tree.

The Titan was being summoned.


	14. One Last Breath

Chapter Fourteen: One Last Breath

Norianna found it odd that the guards that had carried her away from a hysterical Happy had suddenly dumped her in a doughnut-shaped underground tunnel and had left her alone, to go about her own devices, it seemed. They had been gone for ten minutes, at least, and she stood shivering, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to keep warm. She sniffed, looking around her, wondering if there was supposed to be another pair of Skaarj bullies assigned to her. The door that the Skaarj left through was locked, of course; she had tried the handle as soon as they had closed it behind them. The only way to go was forward, down the hallway, but she had an uneasy feeling in her gut that told her to stay put at all costs. She was very good at convincing herself to be brave, but she was having a hard time envisioning any sort of positive ending to her current situation. She had stolen a weapon from the Skaarj—never mind that it wasn't theirs to begin with—and had chased an entire Nali village into the mountains, sparing them a terrible fate at the hands of their constant tormentors. If that wasn't bad enough, she had threatened a war party and had raised her hand against her Skaarj commander—unsuccessfully, of course, but her violent intent was obvious to all.

There was an open grate on the ceiling off to her left; it looked out at an angle at the sky, which was surprisingly clear and smooth for being completely filled with gray clouds. The weather had been overcast so long that she had been led to believe that cool charcoal was the natural color of a Na Palian sunset. A balmy breeze slipped in through the holes in the grate and raised goosebumps on her skin. The temperatures varied a lot in the mountains, she remembered dimly. It might be freezing in one area and merely cool in others. However, she would trade being in Harobed with its frozen ground and subzero temperatures for her current predicament. But she had gotten herself into it; she had no one to blame but herself.

She wanted to walk. She tried to, once or twice, lifting her foot and deliberately putting it in front of her, but the uncertainty in her heart was so strong that she was paralyzed with fear of the unknown. Was she walking towards her death? Would she be actively initiating her last stand if she moved forwards? She couldn't do that; she wouldn't give the Skaarj the pleasure of seeing her wander into whatever trap they had set for her. But if she didn't move—if she didn't take action, as she was always wont to do—then she might end up dying a coward; the Skaarj had limited patience, after all. Her stomach flopped as she thought of finding out what was on the other side of the platform she was standing on. A legion of Skaarj to fight against, a band of humans pitted against each other in a gladiatorial match, a firing squad?

"Or a fairyland, or a porn set, or they'll force me to jump into a pit and plummet straight into hell," she muttered, finally making up her mind. Her brisk footsteps echoed off the walls. "Stop speculating and just _go for it_. It's not like you can change anything now."

She set her jaw as she followed the curve of the corridor. Whatever they were planning for her, she wouldn't give them the pleasure of seeing her give up. She was going down swinging, that much she knew for sure.

Misty bars of light broke up the gloom of the corridor as Norianna came upon a small set of stairs that led up to an open trapdoor. Through it, she could see the sky, colored like an old bruise, and part of the arena wall. She was looking up, it seemed, through the floor of the arena. The iron tree made a gruesome outline against the clouds. Was this where she was supposed to go?

She inhaled deeply a few times, trying to calm her beating heart. Every fiber of her being was screaming at her not to ascend the stairs. She could hear her inner voice begging her to stay put, to be safe, to try to run away while she was still alone and still had a chance.

_Heh. _Norianna planted one foot on the lowest step. _What's the fun in that? _

The circular coliseum rose up around her on all sides when she finally straightened her back after rising to the arena floor. The dust at her feet swirled in the wind that whipped down from the pre-storm clouds. Rolling her shoulders, she looked around, trying not to seem intimidated. Nothing was in the giant circle of sand except her and the tree, which, for some reason, looked like it had shrunk. The half-rotting bodies, hanging by their feet, were brushing the ground like bad fruit from an over-laden tree. She covered her mouth to keep the stench from making her gag.

"Norianna!"

Her head whipped around, eyes focused on one of the open tiers on the coliseum wall. She could see a hulking green form—Shas, of course—and beside him, huddled on her knees, was a pale white speck. Norianna smiled broadly and raised her hand, hiding her fear as best as she could. "Hey, Happy! What do they want me to do—start dancing naked or something?"

"Don't move! Don't do anything! It'll hear you!"

A quick movement from Shas effectively hushed her cellmate, but Norianna had heard enough.

_It? _

As soon as the thought flickered through her mind, the ground beneath her feet began to shake. She looked around, backing up a few steps until her heel hit something hard. It was an eightball gun. A sick feeling spread through her gut. If the Skaarj were voluntarily giving her this particularly destructive weapon…what did she have to use it against?

Up on the open tier, Happy, having had the breath viciously knocked out of her lungs, wheezed, "Don't…don't…." She glared up at the Skaarj. Shas's tail was twitching. He was anxious for blood.

The ground wouldn't stop shaking. It was like a controlled earthquake—but in this case the earthquake seemed to be a herald for something…else. Norianna bent down on one knee and lifted the eightball launcher into her arms, slipping her hand onto the trigger. The instrument was bulky, the majority of its length being dominated by the six interlocked barrels that looked, from head on, like a honeycomb. Up to six rockets could be loaded into each barrel, depending on how long the user held down the trigger; the secondary fire activated the grenade function of the small, roundish 'eightballs' that gave the launcher its name. The little missiles looked comically small, but they packed devastating firepower.

A loud sound from behind her caused her to spin on her heel and fire off a warning shot. The rocket exploded against the ground, sending up a spray of sand. However, when the smoke cleared, there was nothing there…except…

…the trapdoor was shut.

The sound of something spinning and cranking drew her attention to the iron tree. It was rising out of the ground, growing like a weed, causing the bodies on its branches to sway. Across the arena, something else was rising. It was a door.

She swallowed heavily, readjusting her grip on the launcher. From somewhere above her, she could hear a noise like sobbing—or perhaps that was the wind. The door was fully opened now, and it yawned black and empty—until a boulder twice the size of Norianna's body came rocketing out of the abyss and headed straight for her. She reacted purely on instinct, diving directly behind the iron tree and watching with horror as the giant stone connected with the arena wall and burst into rubble, showering her with debris.

She swallowed heavily, noticing that the ground wasn't merely rumbling, it was _shaking. _Shaking rhythmically—like something was walking. Something _big. _

She breathed in through her nose and set her jaw, shifting onto her knees and chancing a peek around the thick stem of the iron tree. She choked a little when she saw heradversary.

It was _huge. _Easily the largest creature she had seen on this planet, it stood nearly as tall as the third tier of the arena. Its scales were dirty brown in color and matched rather well with the tint of the coliseum walls. It stood on its rear legs, but because of its hunched back and drooping neck, it seemed to place a great amount of its weight on its long, lean, sinewy arms, using them as support as it walked. Its head was shaped like a lizard's, and when its mouth opened she could see that it had rows of razor-sharp teeth. It seemed to be looking around for her; she figured its small eyes must not lend themselves very powerfully to its senses or else it would have seen her by now. So _this _is what she had to kill. A Titan. Its name was perfectly suited to its image.

_All right. _She looked down at the eightball gun. _I have to kill a Titan and I have 30 rockets to kill it with. _

_I think I'll give it a shot. _

Without waiting long enough for her mind to talk her body out of the action, Norianna stood up and held down the alternate fire trigger of the eightball. A lever in the back loaded a rocket into one of the eight barrels; the barrel then turned, and the lever loaded a second rocket into the next barrel. When the fifth rocket was pushed into place, she turned around and oriented the weapon so that its fire would strike the Titan directly in the torso.

The last rocket clicked into place. Norianna leapt out from behind the tree and discharged all six of the activated rockets straight into the Titan's body. Each one of them exploded on contact, engulfing the beast in flames and black smoke. It raised its hands up to protect its face and hissed in pain. Norianna didn't give it a chance to recuperate and immediately began launching a volley of primary-fire rockets at her opponent, running in a wide arc to avoid its flailing arms.

Suddenly, to her surprise, the Titan made a fist and brought it heavily down onto the ground. Norianna's legs buckled as the entire arena floor beneath the sand fractured; she felt the ground shift as the Titan opened its hand and pulled a huge slab of stone from underneath the loose dirt. Its head swiveled in her direction and it lobbed its newfound weapon directly at her. It tumbled end over end; one of the tips struck the ground and ricocheted into the air above her head. She didn't waste any time in booking it in the opposite direction, trying to keep her balance on the unsteady ground. The slab fractured against the wall behind her, and she grimaced. That could very easily have been _her_ body that was ripped apart.

She clamped her hand down on the trigger and loaded more secondary fire eightballs, noticing that their grenade function seemed to do more damage to the Titan's seemingly impervious body. As long as she kept moving, its huge projectiles couldn't hit her, and she imagined she was doing pretty well with hitting it with her constant flow of rocketfire. Using the iron tree as a shield turned out to be her favorite strategy, but the only problem was that she couldn't remain there for long or else the Titan would figure out where its torment was coming from.

"Look at me, Happy!" she shouted as she ducked another flung piece of stone flooring. "It's like dodgeball with a fat kid!" Her cellmate made no response, and even if she did, she wouldn't have been able to hear it for all the noise that the Titan was making.

She cheered when it seemed to flinch at the latest volley of rockets—until she realized that she had gotten too close to its ridiculously long arms when she sprinted away from the boulder it had thrown.

The Titan noticed this, too. In a split second—much faster than Norianna thought it could move—its arm was sweeping towards her, claws extended, shooting out to crush her body. She reacted purely on instinct, launching herself backwards and aiming a rocket at the hand that grasped at her legs. The rocket did its job in deterring the scraping fingers, but Norianna screamed out in frustration and pain as the splash damage from the projectile split her left leg open from knee to ankle. She landed heavily on her back, not far enough away from the Titan, and helpless to do anything about it.

Trying to ignore the blinding pain in her leg that was burning its way up her entire side, Norianna desperately loaded six more grenades into the barrel of the gun and fired directly into the Titan's face. It reeled backwards, growling and swiping at its eyes. Its blood poured down into its nostrils; it snorted to clear the airway, consequently spraying Norianna with droplets of red rain. She groaned in disgust.

"Aaaaah, _shit,"_ she hissed, quelling a wave of panic when she saw that her entire calf had been laid open to the bone. With shaking hands she fired more volleys of grenades at the Titan, but to her horror, it didn't seem to be feeling any of them. Or it could be her mind playing tricks on her—was she giving up too early? She thought of Happy and her mangled arm, thought of Shas quietly and steadily cutting the tendons of her cellmate's hand—and she set her teeth. She could get through this. She had used twenty rockets on this animal already—.

"I only have ten left," she breathed, staring disbelievingly at the ammunition display on top of the launcher. She swallowed with some difficulty. After a pause, she snapped the chamber open and pulled a standby rocket out of the barrel, tucking it into one of her flightsuit pockets. She figured she could allow herself one last-ditch effort, and, if worse came to worse, she could always blow herself up. She shivered.

_Happy's watching. Don't lose your cool. _

Trying not to listen to her blood squishing in her shoes as she stood up, she clenched her jaw and rested most of her weight on her right leg. The Titan was swaying on its feet, unsure of whether to approach her or just knock her out with another rock-throw. Norianna decided to make up its mind for it.

"Nine rockets." She pumped the eightball launcher in the air, simultaneously flipping the Titan the bird with her free hand. "I'm gonna take you out with nine motherfucking rockets, you fucking son of a bitch!"

The creature raised its head and bellowed into the sky. Norianna raised her voice in a scream of her own and lobbed six more grenades in its direction. Its entire torso and neck were coated in its blood when the smoke cleared. The Titan had had enough. It stepped forwards, its rumbling footsteps knocking Norianna off balance. As she fell, her adversary reached out and snatched her body off the ground, hoisting her up to face-level.

Big mistake. Norianna snarled in pain and fury and immediately discharged her last three grenades straight into the Titan's face. One of them made it into the animal's mouth and effectively blew a gaping hole in its jaw. It screeched and slammed her down onto the ground, bringing both hands up to its face in a surprisingly human gesture of pain. The now-useless eightball launcher fell from Norianna's fingers and bounced away, sending up a cloud of sand where it finally came to rest.

Happy swallowed a scream when she saw the way Norianna's legs bent when they met the crushed floor of the arena. She was almost certain that both of them had been broken in the fall—and she was proven right when her cellmate rolled over and began attempting to crawl away from the raging Titan, her legs bent at disgustingly unnatural angles.

The Titan, seeing its prey trying to escape, put one bloody hand forwards and closed its three fingers around Norianna's torso; she twisted away, but the Titan merely dropped its grip lower and seized one of her shattered legs. The woman screamed and whipped her head around, glaring hatefully at the monstrosity, her hands clawing the ground as she tried to wrestle with the burning, piercing sensations in her lower body. The Titan, of course, cared not for the pain of its prey, and without a second thought it hoisted her up in the air so that she hung with her head facing the ground, more than five stories up. She was practically on the same level as the platform that Happy and Shas were standing on.

Happy could see that she was in agony; there was a bright spot of white on her lower calf where the bone had punctured the skin. Her entire body recoiled at the sight, and she reflexively drew her legs closer together. However, for the horrible state that she was in, her cellmate looked almost peaceful. She wasn't flailing, at least, and her arms retained a poetic curve as she tried to adjust her center of gravity so that she wasn't swinging around so much. Her hair, its silky golden waves catching the overcast light, seemed to be the only source of color in the entire arena.

The Titan held Norianna directly above its head, staring up at her with its beady red eyes, watching as her body twisted listlessly from its broken leg. Norianna held its gaze with a stare of her own, realizing she was powerless to do anything now but wait for the next onslaught. She tried to reason through her situation, but the paralyzing pain in her limbs made it difficult to do.

The sky broke, but gently; the rain misted down so gently that, at first, Happy thought that the stadium was filled with a cool breeze. She only noticed that it was raining when the droplets began to gather on her arms and tickle her skin as they ran in rivulets to the ground. The moisture flattened the dirt that had been kicked up by the Titan's scuffle, and now that the two warring ones were still, the arena sand turned into sloshing mud. The wind shifted and there was a sudden unexpected parting of the clouds; sunlight poured forth from the sky, a brilliant and bright contrast to the black clouds and the rainy weather. Bars of light struck the brown stones of the Arena, illuminating the entire ring with eerily cheerful brightness. The contestants' bodies were thrown into harsh contrast, and it seemed that Norianna's skin was glowing.

All the while, it kept raining. _A sun shower._

The Titan opened its mouth. A low, rattling hiss bubbled deep in its body, which quickly escalated into a full-throated roar. The sound was unnervingly triumphant.

The roar died away, and the monster drew its arm back. Happy furrowed her brows, leaning forwards breathlessly, almost tipping off the edge of the platform. Above her, Shas snorted and trilled in what could only be described as a Skaarj's laughter. She looked, panicked, from the scene unfolding in front of her to Shas, then back again. Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, hammering. Her breath began to grow shallow.

"Norianna," she whispered.

Twisting in the air like a wind chime, her golden hair flowing like a banner in the wind, Norianna stared into the Titan's gaping maw with a calm and steady gaze. It came as no surprise to her when the Titan launched her into the air once more with a mere flick of its arm, sending her tumbling into the air like a leaf caught in a hurricane. She vaulted past the iron tree and crested the top of her flight, clearing the ceiling of the arena by at least thirty feet. In the breathless second before her descent, where time seemed to slow down and she hung in the air like a bird suspended on a string, she reoriented herself so that she faced the sky. She reached up with both arms, flexing her wrists, trying to swallow the sun with her fingertips. Her hair was buffeted into her face by the wind but it could not hide the smile that curved her lips. The hardness of the unused grenade in her pocket was a comforting weight against her hip. It would be her last assault.

_Guess this is it. _

Happy tried to scream, but she couldn't work any sort of audible sound around the lump in her throat. Instead she began to sob—loud, shuddering, wracking sobs, her chest heaving as she tried to get air into her lungs. A steady stream of tears coursed down her cheeks and dripped to the floor. They were the tears of a child, confused and lost and hurt, watching as its mother died right in front of its eyes. A brave, protective, gentle mother, who held her while she was sleeping and told her to be happy.

Her cellmate's body tumbled closer and closer to Earth; she wished that she would just stay up in the air, or transform in to a bird and escape. Suspended between Earth and sky—she had heard that saying before. 'Twixt Earth and Sky—that was supposed to be where heaven was, wasn't it?

Norianna flipped in the air, spinning backwards so that she was falling head-first. The Titan, in response to this movement, lifted its own head higher and opened its mouth, letting its gray tongue loll over its bottom jaw. Happy tried to trace the trajectory of her friend's body; she was either going to fall into the tree, or onto the ground, or…or…!

"No!" Realization hit her like a slap across the face, and Shas had to kick her in the stomach to prevent her from leaping off of the platform. "You can't! _You can't!"_

Norianna landed directly in the Titan's mouth; its jaws snapped closed as if they had been spring-loaded. One of her legs didn't quite make it into its maw and was immediately severed from the rest of her body; it fell to the floor of the arena with a wet _plop._ There was a muffled crunch as the Titan chewed once, and then all was silent.

Happy got the sensation that she was growing smaller, folding into herself like a piece of paper being crumpled. She tried to breathe normally, but she could only take in small swallows of air. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her nails cut into her palms, making them bleed. Her perception of the world narrowed until she was only aware of her heartbeat pounding in her ears and the echoing chewing sounds of her cellmate's body being ground into a pulp.

_Cellmate. _The word violently threw her back into the reality of the situation. Norianna was gone. A sort of panic came over her and she stood up, throwing herself into the hallway, pressing herself up against the opposite wall, following its curve with her shoulder pressed to the stone as she pressed her palms to her eyes so hard that she began seeing spots of color against the blackness. "No, no, no, no," she chanted, fighting the urge to vomit. She walked faster, trying to run, but Shas's warning growl stopped her before she got too far.

Suddenly, an ear-splitting roar echoed into the hallway from the arena. Happy's head jerked to the side; she heard Shas's trill of surprise a moment later. She made her was cautiously to the edge of the arena, a good distance away from Shas; he must have been distracted to let her get _this _far. The Titan was on all fours, head arched upwards unnaturally, the fan-like protrusions on its spine flared. There was a muffled popping sound, and then its stomach split open, bursting from its body in a sloppy spray of intestines and blood. Its entrails—or what was left of them—slipped over each other and pooled onto the sand. Everything looked, and smelled, like charred meat.

She realized with a start what had happened. Right before she had been wounded, Norianna had put something in her pocket. A grenade.

It had exploded inside of the animal's stomach.

Happy's eyes burned with tears. Norianna had _won. _She had killed herself in winning, but she had _won. _And now she was all alone with Shas again, but she felt such strange pride in her cellmate. _You couldn't kill her, _she mentally accused Shas as she stared at his astonished expression. _She had to kill herself because you didn't do it properly. You idiot. _

And suddenly she realized. She couldn't be alone with Shas. She didn't _have _to be alone with General Shas any more. Norianna had shown her what she could do. What she _had _to do.

_They believe you are the Messiah, _Baran had said. _And you are stronger than you know. So you take charge, now. You may not be the savior of the planet, but you are the savior to them. Here, now._

"Right now," she whispered. "Now."

__

_General Shas-ulhara. _

Shas started. The Source's voice was harsh inside his head. He dragged his attention away from the disgusting spectacle in the arena—_Terran zar'chi!—_and closed his eyes, connecting his consciousness with his Queen's.

_I am issuing new orders. You shall slaughter all humans that come your way. I forbid their capture to be used in your bloodsports. We have very little time left to establish dominance on this planet._

Shas bowed his head in respect, even though the Queen could not see him. _I will do all that you ask. _

_You and the other generals are treading dangerous ground, _she continued. _I will no longer tolerate failure of any kind. If there are Terrans upon Na Pali's surface, they will inevitably bring more Terrans. They are vermin. They are to be terminated, not kept as pets. _There was a pause. _Is that clear, General Shas-ulhara. _It was a statement, not a question.

_Perfectly clear, my Queen. _He furrowed his brow as a nagging sensation at the back of his neck alerted him to the presence of danger.

No one was with him on the tier that would pose any danger to him.

No one except…Happy.

_Will you pardon me, my Queen? I am about to be attacked by one of the lowlife Terrans that we happen to be discussing. _

There was an echoing snort of contempt from the Source. _I deny your request, General. I am not done addressing you. Perhaps if you didn't keep them until their sanity is shattered, you wouldn't be in the situation you are now. You shall wait until I am finished issuing orders, and then you may dispose of your plaything._

____ _

This was her last chance. She had to take it, and take it now, and it had to work, because if she failed, then Norianna would have died for nothing, and the unknown Messiah would be hunted down and murdered, and Na Pali would fall. It would be brought to its knees by the act of a single creature—her hateful captor—her dreaded companion.

_He _did this. He cut off her hand and raped her and beat her and used her and killed her cellmate—her friend—and as she stood there in the rain with the wind whipping her hair into her eyes, she thought, for a fleeting, terrible moment, that she could—

_Kill him. _

The word was a gentle whisper in her consciousness, running through her mind like balm, breathing life into her aching, mangled limbs, until she almost felt—what was that feeling?

Oh, of course. _Happy_.

She cast her eyes down at the twisted piece of metal extending out of her arm. The shredded metal tapered into a wedge at the very end, and with the strength of her whole arm, no, her whole body, behind it, it would serve her purpose. Sha's last act of violence towards her would prove to be the death of him. She looked at the back of Shas' head. _There's only one place you need to worry about when fighting a Skaarj, _Norianna had told her with a sly smile. Happy's muscles tensed.

Of course Shas didn't deserve to die in the same place where Norianna had fallen, but it was enough to know that she would avenge her friend and finally, perhaps, be at peace.

She took a deep breath. And another. The world seemed to slow down as she took her first step against General Shas-ulhara. Her whole body began to tremble with excitement. There was no fear any more—how could there be? She had lived the last six months of her life in constant anticipation of torture, of pain, of the unknown death that faced her, but now her future shone bright and clear before her, and she couldn't help the small smile that curved her cut and bruised lips. Here she was, making her own destiny. After all of her suffering, after all she had been through, the only hand that would take her life would be—

The sky churned in gray and purple swirls above her, whipped into a frenzy by the wind. Shas hadn't moved from his spot at the edge of the walkway—what was he waiting for? Why was he being so still? It was as if he was listening for something…but she couldn't waste time speculating. If he wasn't paying attention _now, _then she had to do it _now. _If she hurried, she could make it. She could do it, as long as he was distracted. _Even in death, _Happy thought, her throat constricting in grief, _she's helping me. She told me we'd take them together. She told me we'd bring them down. And she's right. God, she was right all along. _

A low roar of thunder rolled through the clouds. Here, now, with the wind of the storm pushing her gently but insistently forwards, the calm, gentle voice of Norianna echoed in her mind like the tolling of a church bell. The words rocked through her body and sang in her ears, until her entire being buzzed around the same wonderful, impossible order.

_Kill him. _

She raised her arm and whispered, through a hoarse, shuddering sob, "Yes."

She began to run. Her bruised legs and crushed feet sent painful barbs shooting up through her calves, but she was too focused on her task to let it bother her. She kept her eyes glued on the back of Shas' head—and as long as he stayed near the edge of the walkway, she could strike him. Just enough of a push, the slightest touch of metal against his head, and he would reflexively flinch away from his assailant. Which meant he would leap forwards without really thinking about what he was doing. And no Skaarj, to Happy's knowledge, had ever survived a sixteen-story drop. It was so simple, so easy—

–Too easy.

In the split second before she lifted her arm for the blow, a stray thought blew through her mind. Shas was smart. He demonstrated control over himself and his subjects at all times. He knew that she had followed him out of her cell. He had put on the show purposely, had baited her out into the open, made her watch Norianna's sickening execution, had left her chains unattached. He was standing in the most ridiculous position on the walkway. It was almost as if he were—as if he were—

—baiting her.

It was true that Shas had anticipated this very moment, where Happy would snap and attempt to attack him. But the moment had come at the most inopportune time. The Queen's consciousness filled his head like the rushing of water, cutting out any sources of distraction from the outside world. His sense of smell, sight, sound, and touch were all dulled as he listened to the Queen's harsh voice berate him and his fellow generals for being too lenient, but he could not listen to her completely—his primal sense of danger was in overdrive. _Something _was coming to get him, and he knew who it was, but he couldn't make his body move. He felt like he was in a state of hibernation.

Her footfalls were almost upon him now. In a last-ditch effort he clenched his fist. The Razik blades sliced out of their metal confinements with a satisfying hiss. Maybe he could save himself—the Queen could wait, for just one moment, as he turned, as if in slow-motion, to see if he could decapitate Happy before she struck him first. He felt her twinge of annoyance as his attention was drawn from her, but she could do nothing to stop him. He had to kill Happy before anything else could be done. That was her new order—surely the Source could understand that.

Pivoting on his heel, he swung his arm out to the side, getting his Razik blades in the correct position that would neatly remove Happy's head from her shoulders—.

She wasn't there. Or, rather, she wasn't where he had anticipated her to be. She was hovering, it seemed, three feet in the air, directly in front of him, her teeth bared in a snarl, her eyes boring into his, burning with courage and defiance and hatred; it was a look he had never seen her display before. It made her look strong. Of course he realized his mistake too late; that she had jumped, and now he was leaning backwards, his heels dipping off of the edge of the platform, losing his balance. He tried to bend forward at the waist to readjust his center of gravity, but his action was delayed by a brilliant point of pain in his forehead. He looked up, confused, and saw that Happy's mangled iron arm was buried up to her elbow in his crown.

His Razik blades, however, continued on their curved path, and he felt a spill of warm liquid on his arm as they sliced, not through Happy's neck, but into her torso, just beneath her armpit, until they became wedged in her sternum. They were imbedded so deep into her chest wall that he couldn't even see the gleam of the blades. Her dark eyes widened, and her mouth opened; a spill of red bubbled over her bottom lip. He felt a tremor run through her body; but still, she flexed her arm and drove the metal wedge deeper into his skull. His vision began to darken.

Their faces were inches apart. Her breath came in deep, rattling gasps; his, not at all. He tried in vain to fall forward onto the walkway, but Happy's forward momentum had carried them both over the edge. There was no going back. She had done this deliberately. She was facing her own death in causing his.

"Happy?" His voice sounded slurred in his ears.

"That's right," she hissed back at him, her voice thickened by the amount of blood in her lungs, and although he could not understand her, he sensed buoyancy in her voice, a triumphant strain in her tone. "I am."

They fell.


	15. Holy Ground

Thanks for reading. Thanks to the fellas over at UnrealSP dot org who saw fit to add me to their awsm fanfiction page.

Apparently the theme song of this chapter is "Lions" by Lights because I listened to it umpteen times while writing. =_=

Chapter Fifteen: Holy Ground

Bluff Eversmoking Monastery was basking beneath winter storm clouds and the threat of heavy rain as General Bharuk's second lieutenant made his way slowly towards the Nali cell block to perform another tedious round of "guard shuffling".

Three Krall, crouched in a circle in the middle of the cell block floor and deeply engrossed with a game played with a trio of painted dice, swiveled their heads lazily towards the stone archway as the Skaarj warrior entered the room. One of them yawned and, after a tense moment, the three turned their attention back to their game of death bones. The warrior snorted disdainfully at the group and instead approached the scout who was dutifully patrolling the cell block.

"You are to go guard the land bridge for now," he said brusquely. "I will take this post until General Bharuk gives us further orders."

The scout saluted to officially acknowledge the new order, and then, as an afterthought, said, "You heard the news about General Shas ul-hara, did you not?"

The warrior snorted, tossing his head. "No doubt it is propaganda spread by these idiot Krall we have to babysit. I'm not surprised you believe that nonsense. Did you actually _listen _to what was said? They claimed that a _Terran_ took down both the General _and _a fully-grown Titan. You're being ridiculous. Now go do your job."

The scout turned on his heel and stalked off, more puzzled than angry. He thought he had heard two of his commanding officers discussing complaints being issued because of a creature that was working methodically through major Skaarj facilities and causing major damage to each one. No one was entirely sure of what the creature was, since the soldiers who were dispatched to apprehend the intruder were all slaughtered. The rumors were few and far between, but they pervaded the warrior ranks nevertheless. It was always news when one of the commanding officers was rumored to have been killed. That affected the chain of command that reached down to even the youngest Skaarj pupae.

The scout pushed open the heavy main doors of the monastery, shivering as a blast of cold air slammed into his body. The wind was wild and frigid above the lake, and the surrounding mountains were capped with snow. Even though he had been stationed at the Monastery for nearly a year, the scout had yet to acclimate to nearly permanent winter conditions. It didn't help that he was a cold blooded creature, but, after all, the Queen demanded that all of Na Pali be subjugated, the cold weather notwithstanding. At least he wasn't stationed at Gala's Peak.

He began his slow patrol, walking down the sloping land bridge that led from the Monastery to the heavy wooden drawbridge that separated the wind-washed plateau from the rest of the world. There were Skaarj stationed on the other side of the gate, he knew, but he needn't bother trying to communicate with them. He didn't even know why this particular route was necessary. If anything was coming towards the Monastery, the Skaarj at the gate would take care of it. Even though the bluff only sported ten Skaarj and a handful of Krall, there were no qualms about a lack of security. Very few of the native creatures on Na Pali were an equal match for a Skaarj of any caste.

The scout looked at the ground as he walked. Na Pali had been ridiculously easy to conquer. The Nali could be made to do whatever the Skaarj wished of them, and the population was so plentiful that the Skaarj could slaughter as many of the four-armed innocents as they wished to keep order, and there would never be a shortage of workers. Well, that's what it had been like in the previous years. The scout wasn't too sure how the Nali civilization was faring now. Talk of the Messiah had died down months ago when that Terran woman had botched her escape from the Monastery; the Nali did their jobs quietly and without protest. The scout almost missed seeing their spirits crushed by labor and maltreatment. Now their eyes held nothing but despair; their supposed messiah was dead.

Either way, the scout was more interested in the strange stories of the 'intruder'. Even though the warrior didn't fully believe in the rumor, the scout was sure that it held some truth. The Skaarj stationed at the Dark Arena hadn't been heard from in months, and with most of Skaarj energy being exerted in Tarydium extraction, there simply wasn't enough time to "check up" on that particular facility. Even more interesting was that the trajectory that the 'intruder' was taking didn't bring it anywhere near the Dark Arena, so even if the stories of a Terran killing a Titan weren't true, something was definitely working its way through other Skaarj bases and causing… incidents.

It was an impressive story to hear, at least. According to reports the creature was even smaller than a Nali but had managed to derail several Tarydium and Nali enslavement operations and kill several fairly important berserkers.

Behind him, the thick wood of the gate creaked and gave a low groan. The Skaarj turned halfway, a puzzled growl rising into his throat. The gate was slowly opening.

"What is the matter?" the scout called. "Have you completed your shift already?"

He froze. The white wisp of flesh slowly being revealed by the gate was definitely _not _the gate guard. When the gate was opened far enough to show the creature's entire body, the scout realized, with a start, that it was pointing something at him.

This realization was the last fully formed thought in his mind, as the sudden shock of an .80 caliber bullet cut cleanly through his crown and sent him crumpling to the ground. He was dead before the dust settled around his body.

Lowering her Terran trooper rifle, 849 sneezed, wiping her nose along her bare forearm.

The rifle's sharp echo against the surrounding mountains was loud enough to alert her enemies for miles, but the prisoner merely shrugged her latest acquisition onto her back, a GES Biorifle. Its shape reminded her of a portable vacuum cleaner whose intake bag she could carry on her back, but instead of carting around dust bunnies and dropped Cheerios, the burden she carried was highly corrosive Tarydium waste that could be lobbed in wads of varying sizes at her enemies. It was a heavy weapon to drag around and it made her smell like rotting oranges, but she deemed that it was worth it. At least for now, until she found who she was looking for and could unload some of her weaponry onto the Terran she had found out about after she had left the _ISV-Kran. _

Translator messages she had picked up through her rather rapid ascension through the Na Pali monument of the Sunspire told of three travelers: Alexi Onalopov and Kira and Karl Argmanov. They had left the wreck of the ship early after the crash with some of their crewmembers. However, events had transpired that had driven them from their shipmates. They were apprehended and, 849 learned after stumbling across two corpses, killed.

Except Kira.

For some reason, Kira had been kidnapped by the Krall that had killed her brother and her fiancée.

And she had been brought _here_.

849 swept her eyes over the sprawling brick building looming in front of her. According to all of the messages she had read, this Kira person was obviously loved by her teammates. Several rescue parties had been trailing her for weeks, even after the death of the two other members of her group.

She was almost excited. It was of little consequence that she wouldn't be able to understand Moscow-born Argmanov without using her Universal Translator.

She was going to have a friend soon.

And so she began to move.

* * *

Bharuk was on his way to the walkway that led down the side of the bluff when he first caught the wafting scent of blood and… something else. Something alien.

Striding purposefully through the Monastery's grounds, he looked around to see if anything was disturbed. There were one or two Nali feeding the cows and rabbits in the open barn off to the left; he shoved them aside as he followed the smell that made his skin tingle.

When he saw the sprawling carcass of one of his scouts lying in a heap on the land bridge, he knew.

When he reached the bottom of the path, he saw two Krall guards sprawled on the ground. There was a heavy and caustic taste in the air that he recognized as Tarydium waste. He followed the corridor into the bowels of the sewage facilities that wound through the rock below the monastery, stepping over the carcasses of more Skaarj scouts and Krall gaurds than he was comfortable with seeing.

The smell was getting stronger. His pace increased until he stepped out onto a system of wooden planks that were suspended over water. Across the room from him was an elite Krall—Grorq, standing over the twitching remains of one of his Krall lieutenants.

Grorq turned to him. "It came without warning, sir," he said stiffly. "I didn't even have time to react before it dove into the water below us. It's got a Biorifle. Nasty stuff."

"You didn't have time to react because you are an idiot," Bharuk grunted. "We must kill it. It is a Terran, is it not?"

The Krall opened his mouth, his tongue lolling over his bottom jaw. "Yes, sir," he said.

Bharuk snorted with laughter. "Too bad we killed the pitiful egg-layer that the Nali thought was their warrior princess, eh? The Nali won't help this Terran and it's probably lost already. It won't take long for me to dispatch it."

Grorq cast a sideways glance to his Skaarj overseer. _I cannot believe how arrogant Skaarj are. This Terran has wiped out more than half of our forces already._

The Skaarj shoved him forwards. "These tunnels all lead towards the prison block. I shall go back up and round the Terran off from the main doors. You follow it through the pipelines and flush it out."

Swallowing his comment—_you assume that it will wait around for you to corner it—_the Krall took a breath and plunged into the brackish water below.

Bharuk turned on his heel and sprinted towards the waning sunlight outside.

* * *

_Squelch. _

The giblets of three Krall and a Skaarj warrior bounced along the mossy floor of the room that 849 had just entered. She checked the ammunition readout on her GES Biorifle and smiled to herself. She had more than half a tank, which meant she had three more fully-charged shots of instantly fatal sludge-bombs to use. She was surprised at how violently the byproduct reacted with oxygen when it was discharged. The group of aliens playing their inane little dice game didn't even have a chance to look up before she turned all four of them into puddles of meat.

"Kira?" she called. No answer. She sighed. She had been calling the other woman's name for a while but had been answered with nothing but the sound of wind or the snarls of Skaarj.

She looked around, stepping out of the low pool of water that the tunnel she had been traveling through spit her into. There were a series of doors on the opposite wall; four on the bottom and four on the open floor above them. There was a bench and several chairs in front of these doors, and as 849 approached she found a ragged journal crumpled on the floor in front of one of the doors.

_This must be a prison, _she thought, picking up the journal and placing it on the table. Opening it, she found, as she expected, the smooth, flowing script of the Nali's language.

_This could be helpful. _

She bent down, turning on her Universal Translator and scanning the page. The words took a while to appear on the screen.

_I have discovered a secret! Last night I snuck out of my hiding place and swam through the pipes to the prison. They have captured a girl! The Krall sergeant took two boots in the mouth when he approached her. Haha. I can only laugh at their stupidity._

849 chuckled softly. The second entry, however, was a bit more troubling.

_ The woman they captured is scheduled to be executed. I cannot let this happen! As foolish as it sounds I will attempt to sneak her out of the prison cell through our secret caves. From there she can escape to the—_

She never got to read the rest. The skin on the back of her neck prickled and she reflexively whirled around, holding the Translator in front of her face as a Skaarj's Razik blades zeroed in on her throat. The blades snagged against the machine and glanced off, throwing the lizard man off balance. 849 lobbed the Translator at its head and, stuffing the journal page into her pocket, leaped into a fighting position.

The thrown Translator didn't do much except make the Skaarj angry, but she wasn't expecting it to do that much damage. She was a little upset with herself that she had used such a delicate instrument like a baseball, but she couldn't help her trigger reactions.

The Skaarj in front of her had risen up on the balls of his feet and was bouncing lightly back and forth, baiting her hand, confusing her. He'd either jump at her or dodge or—

He jumped. She leaped backwards and grasped for the nozzle of the GES Biorifle. She squeezed down on the trigger and sprayed the Skaarj with green slime. It darted backwards and flung a pair of electrical charges towards her. Easily avoiding them, she began charging a larger wad of Tarydium sludge. If she could just let the ammunition charge long enough, she'd be able to lob a fatal wad towards the Skaarj and eliminate her current problem with one clean hit.

But something hit her in the back, and suddenly the smell of rotting fruit was ripe in the air as the Biorifle ruptured, spilling its toxic substance down her legs. She shrieked as she was gripped from behind and tossed easily into the low pool of water she had just come through. Struggling out of the arm straps, she saw a Krall lumber out of the shadows, twirling his concussion staff like a baton.

_He must have come out of the tunnel. Shit. _

The quarters were too close for her regular rifle. She grabbed her Enforcer and aimed it at the Skaarj. The Krall, however, had other ideas, and charged her again.

_They're covering for each other?_

She dashed forwards, slipping away from the reaching talons, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went wide but caused the Skaarj to launch itself into a roll. Seizing the opportunity, 849 managed to connect with three bullets into the Skaarj's tumbling body. It snarled when it stood up again, bleeding heavily, and, to her surprise, immediately running towards her. She didn't have much time to react as the huge creature bore down on her, revealing another surprise: it had _two _pairs of Razik blades attached to its wrists. In desperation 849 unslung her rifle and swung the butt of the weapon around and down, catching the Skaarj's arm by pure chance. The Razik blades were forced down to the mossy ground and, caught between the Terran weapon and the cold marble floor, snapped in half. Chambering the weapon again, the prisoner slammed the side of the gun into the Skaarj's side where she saw a trickle of blood from one of her bullets. The lizard collapsed.

Behind her, the Krall was getting ready for an assault of his own. The huge-jawed monster was slightly more agile than the Skaarj, and the way it wielded its staff was both impressive and fearful. More than once she was a little late in ducking and she could actually see her reflection in the glossy metal as it passed mere millimeters over her head. Sometimes the Krall abandoned its precise swinging with the staff and stepped in close to slash at her with its claws or kick her legs out from under her. To make matters worse, the Skaarj had rejoined the fight, and was standing at a distance, peppering her body with painful electrical shocks. Soon she was panting and sweating and bleeding and considering fleeing the situation.

_Gotta get more ammunition, _she thought, feeling the eerie lack of weight in her pistol that told her she was going to be in a lot of trouble within a few trigger pulls. For some reason she kept missing the damn creature. Of course she had never been up against a Krall-Skaarj team before.

The two aliens suddenly backed off, circling around her like a pair of sharks. She held her Enforcer at the ready and turned in a slow circle with them, never allowing them to see her back. They would occasionally lunge, one at a time, towards her, but her guard was up, and each time she evaded their blows. She was wounded but she was quick.

"I'll dance with you," she whispered on a shuddering breath.

She chanced a glance around her. She could always escape through the pool, if worst came to worst—but it was filled with Tarydium sludge now. There was a door off to her left somewhere—

The Krall feigned a lunge towards her and without thinking 849 stepped back, turning her body fully away from the Skaarj. The huge lizard slipped forwards and grabbed her throat with a hand that was the size of a dinner plate, erasing any thoughts of escape from her mind. Her arms immediately went up she fired her Enforcer, point-blank, into the Skaarj's chest. The sound of empty shells clattering on the floor was almost musical.

_Die die die die die die—_

"_Guh!_" 849's face contorted into a snarl as the Krall's concussion staff slammed into the small of her back. Despite her best efforts, she went down on one knee and lost her grip on the warrior's Razik blades. The Skaarj took the opportunity to slash down with his newly free arm, scoring two wicked lines down the right side of the woman's face. She went down heavily but sprang back to her feet in a desperate attempt to get her bearings, shaking her head to get the blood away from her eyes. She knew that to go down was to die.

"This pathetic thing can actually fight," Grorq said, trying to keep the admiration out of his voice as Bharuk examined his broken wristblade. The Skaarj assassin rumbled deep in his chest. 849 turned to face him again, her free hand pressed against her face in a pathetic attempt to staunch the bleeding.

"It is a flailing animal," Bharuk said derisively, even though his chest was heaving with exertion. The Terran's mark had been true; three bullet holes in his armor were beginning to seep blood. "Come with me. When we get close enough, grab it. I will kill it."

_You are a Skaarj warrior-class assassin, why do _I_ need to hold the Terran in place_? Nevertheless, staff at the ready, Grorq moved hesitantly towards his target. Bharuk fell into step next to him, and together they advanced maliciously towards their soon-to-be-slaughtered guest.

849 choked and a spray of red escaped from between her teeth. For the first time since she could remember, she found herself actually backing _away_ from an enemy. There was a lump of something in her throat and it tasted so unfamiliar that it took her a moment before she realized that she was…scared.

Scared of the possibility of death.

Scared of dying so close to deliverance.

_I didn't know it was going to ambush me_, she heard herself say, and her hands tightened desperately around her nearly empty pistol.

The Manta had been small but it had struck with violence and precision. It would have killed her if she hadn't had Myscha's knife.

The memory of the Manta made her angry. Very angry.

And the fear vanished.

Almost without knowing what her body was doing, she threw herself at the approaching duo of aliens. She was aiming for the Skaarj—_take out the biggest threat first_—but suddenly the mottled creature seized his Krall companion and threw him into her way, dancing back a few steps after he had done so. As their bodies met, 849 could see that the Krall was as surprised as she was.

_I always knew Skaarj were cowards_, she thought bitterly as her body connected with three hundred pounds of Krall muscle. They tumbled backwards into the pool of water. Grorq landed heavily on his back and immediately squealed with pain as the remaining Tarydium sludge from the Terran's discarded biorifle burned into his skin. The unprotected skin of the prisoner's legs sizzled quietly as she quickly positioned herself over Grorq's body.

"Miserable little—" Grorq began to bark, but his words were interrupted with a roar of agony as the Terran, with one swift motion, removed the knife from her thigh and jabbed the blade as deeply as she could into the side of his head. Her hand slipped, though, and missed piercing through his rather thin skull. The edge of the weapon became lodged in between the thick folds of his skin, and he heard her make a frustrated noise. He heaved her body off of his and she sailed through the air like a leaf, landing on her back on the other side of the pool with a mighty splash.

Grimly, Bharuk watched as the Krall lurched violently to his feet, his hands fumbling with the handle of the knife sticking at an angle out of his temple. Turning his beady eyes to his Skaarj overseer, Grorq could do little more than hiss and work his jaws reflexively.

_You trash. You Skaarj incompetent. Use _me _as a shield, will you?_ He couldn't form words any more. He wanted to speak, but there was nothing in his head but pain.

849 gasped as the acidic water seeped into the wounds on her body, and she crawled stiffly out of the shallow pool as if she were extremely cold. She was aware of a quickly approaching form but she couldn't do much about it. She braced herself for the worst. If she made it through this next attack she would decide what to do.

The rain of blows never came. Instead, there was a gurgling rush of water on mossy ground and the sharp strike of armor against scales. She looked up in time to see the Krall she had just stabbed surge out of the pool and grab the Skaarj from behind. It locked its arms underneath the warrior's and laced its fingers behind its head hoisting it upwards so that its feet nearly left the floor. Clamping its wolflike teeth into its betrayer's shoulder, it began chewing through the Skaarj's scales.

Bharuk bellowed, lashing his tail against the floor. "You _idiot! _What do you think you're doing?" He tried to slash at Grorq with the Razik blades but the Krall was holding him in such a way that attacking would be impossible. He struggled all the more violently when he saw the Terran struggle to its feet, cocking its head at the situation taking place in front of it. "Let go of me! I am your commander! I'll kill you, _zar'chi!_"

Grorq could not longer understand the words, but when the Terran stood up and turned towards them, he knew that Bharuk's threats would soon be silenced. And so he clamped down harder, his teeth boring into the Skaarj's bones as the intruder, in a seemingly practiced move, took a few running steps towards the Skaarj and actually jumped onto Bharuk's body. One of her hands found purchase in the space behind his chest armor and the other wrapped firmly around the handle of the knife in Grorq's head. The Krall almost sighed in blessed relief as she pulled the blade out. Biting down harder on the flesh in his mouth, he listened to the satisfying sound of the Terran's knife splitting Bharuk's head open like a piece of overripe fruit. He let go, then, and watched as the Terran stepped out of the way of Bharuk's falling body.

_Little,_ he thought dimly as he watched the Terran wiping the knife on the shredded remains of her pants. _So little. _

The two strangers stood there for a moment, the body of the fallen warrior still twitching in its death throes between them. Blood ran in little red rivulets off of the Krall's tongue and teeth. 849 cocked her head again, and, feeling something dripping down her jaw, put her hand back on her face.

"Ouch," she said.

Grorq brought his taloned hand up to the two inch-deep gash on his head. His body throbbed with acid burns. "Ouch," he repeated roughly.

Nudging the Skaarj with the toe of her boot to make sure it was dead, 849 swiped the lift keycard from its place on his back armor plate. As she bent down, wincing, to retrieve her Enforcer from where she had dropped it before her final attack, she felt a wave of something like nausea strike her. She bit it back.

Grorq watched her straighten and check the clip in her battered weapon. _Now, _he thought, _would be the perfect time to get her. Swing with the staff while she's not looking. Quick and easy. _

Almost as if she had read his mind, the Terran's arm swung around and pointed the pistol directly at his head. They stood there, their flesh still dripping with tainted water, eyes locked.

"I don't know why you did that, but I won't spare you," she said curtly, but her heart wasn't in her words. She didn't want to waste any more ammunition during this particular battle, and she wasn't sure that she'd be able to withstand another onslaught.

For the first time ever, she was considering _not _killing one of the scourges of Na Pali.

_Save ammunition for Kira; she might need it. _

Finally, she decided to walk over to the cell block control on the far wall and pull down on the rusted latch. The eight doors on both levels of the block swung open simultaneously, and a few dazed Nali stumbled out. When they saw Grorq, they retreated like shy birds back into the shadows of their cells.

"Touch them," 849 said dangerously, gesturing to her self-imposed charges, "and I will _destroy _you."

Grorq never considered himself as gutless as his Skaarj overseers, but the look on the Terran's bruised and swollen face was enough to wind a cold thread of apprehension down his spine, even if he couldn't understand the words.

He was bleeding badly. His skin felt like it was on fire. His head buzzed with indescribable pain.

Suddenly the Skaarj's orders to exterminate any and all opposition seemed… irrelevant.

Besides, this one had put up a damn good fight and had gotten rid of the biggest pain in the ass he had ever had the displeasure of working for. He looked down at Bharuk's corpse. _Serves you right for scoffing at the Nali's prophecy_, he thought. _Looks like you killed the wrong 'pitiful egg layer'. _

He only said one thing to her before he disappeared through the doorway that led towards the front of the Monastery, so as not to scare her into shooting him. It was the closest thing to a farewell in his language, and he felt that she deserved it.

"H'rakrah."

_Keep fighting. _

As soon as he disappeared the prisoner braced herself against the wall and swallowed heavily against the tightening in her gullet. Her body was rebelling against her wounds and there was something wrong with her throat. She had probably swallowed some of the sludge-filled water when she landed in the pool; her lungs burned painfully every time she took a breath. _Don't puke, don't puke, don't puke,_ she pleaded silently. _I can't lose anything now, I don't have enough_.

Her words didn't work. Her stomach seized up and retched hollowly, bringing up greenish water and the half-digested bits of a root that 849 had eaten in desperation on her way down from Velora Pass. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she struggled to keep the remains of what she had eaten in her system, but the force of her nausea was too great. She vomited until she was only bringing up strings of saliva and was hunched on all fours on the ground, shivering like a leaf.

When it was over, she crawled away from the mess and waited for the pain in her vitals to subside. But it didn't. If anything, it was getting worse.

She frowned. This wasn't what usually happened. Usually she waited and whatever was hurting her went away. The bleeding would stop or the wound would close or the Manta would die and then everything would be over.

This felt…different. This felt _bad. _

"I'm not going to die," she croaked. "I can't die now. Kira's here. She's waiting."

She tried to get up. She couldn't.

She tried again. This time her arms gave out and she sank to the floor.

_I'm not going to die. I will live. _

For five long months she had made her way across Na Pali, fighting nearly every step of the way.

She could fight no more.

* * *

Ages afterwards, she breathed again.

She found herself on her back, staring up with one eye at a red clay ceiling and feeling like she was wrapped in papier-mâché. Her other eye was covered with strips of bandages that were wrapped around her head, covering the twin scars that were forming from her forehead to her chin. Looking down, she saw the reason her body felt so stiff: she was wrapped from head to toe with the snowy white strips of cloth. Her hands looked like marshmallows at the ends of her thin wrists.

But she was alive. She was also clean, which was a glorious feeling.

She turned her head. She was lying on a straw mat in the corner of a small but warm room. There was a fire burning in the grate on the wall opposite her; a heavy iron pot hung over the flames. Sitting at a small desk was a Nali priest. His wiry body was decorated with crimson and blue stripes of paint along his arms and head.

_Myscha. _Her lips formed the word but no sound came out. It was just as well. Myscha existed only in her past. Sometimes he came closer to her and she could see him in her peripheral vision, but he always vanished before she could turn her head all the way around.

The priest's arm was moving; he was writing. Sitting on a mat next to the desk was a second priest, dutifully sewing a piece of ragged cloth that 849 recognized as her pants. Lined up against the wall were her rifle, Enforcer, knife, boots, Universal Translator, and ammunition pouch.

Grunting a little with the effort, she managed to push herself into a sitting position. An old ache in her back twinged a little, but nothing had ruptured with her movements. Her eyebrows furrowed. _How long have I been here?_

The Nali had noticed her motions. The priest in the chair put down his pencil and stood, taking a bowl from the fireplace mantle. Lifting up the cover of the cauldron, he spooned some cream-colored liquid into the bowl and walked slowly towards her, kneeling down and offering it to her when he reached her bedside. The second priest stilled his hand and watched, needle poised, as 849 reached out and noticed that her clumsily bandaged hands couldn't possibly hold the bowl securely.

She looked at the bowl of what she took to be soup. Her stomach growled and the sound nearly echoed in the tiny room. The Nali priest said some gentle words to her that she didn't understand, bringing the bowl closer to her lips.

_I look pitiful but it's better than starving, _the prisoner thought as the Nali tipped the liquid into her mouth. It was more watery than soup and the taste reminded her of milk mixed with sweet potatoes. All too soon she had swallowed the last drop. The Nali sewing her pants ducked his head to hide a guilty smile when he saw the forlorn look on the Terran's face when the bowl was taken away from her.

849 quickly realized that getting up to serve herself was going to be impossible. The bandages around her body crippled her movement.

She pointed one of her 'blobs' towards the fireplace. "More?"

The first Nali shook his head, saying something else. She sighed and then pointed to her Translator. When it was placed in her hands, she used her nose to press the power button. The screen flickered and then went black again. She sighed, exasperated. The solar batteries must have been disrupted when she had thrown the machine at the Skaarj. She shook it, listening to the mechanics rattling around inside.

"Great," she muttered, giving it a half-hearted toss onto the mat and crossing her arms. "Now how am I going to understand Kira?"

_Kira!_

"Hey," she said, excitedly. The first Nali looked down at her expectantly. "Kira," she said, testing them to see if they recognized her name. "Do you know Kira?"

The two priests exchanged unreadable glances, but 849 wasn't giving up. She gestured to the pants in the second Nali's hands. "There's a paper in there. In the pocket. Can I look at those for a second?" After a moment, she held both arms out.

Instead, the Nali picked up a crumpled wad of parchment from his desk. He unfolded it and said something to her, holding the material dubiously out to her.

"Yes!" 849 clamped both of her bound hands against the paper. "Kira," she said, pointing. "I read something about Kira in here with this—" here she pointed to the Universal Translator, "—but I didn't finish reading it. Er, Terran!" Her face brightened and she gestured for the priest to approach her. "Tell me where the Terran is."

The priest picked up the paper and scanned the writing on the page. His brown face seemed to become more serious and he looked uncertainly at the prisoner.

"Where?" 849 asked breathlessly, tapping the paper and then pointing to herself. "I need to find the Terran girl that used to be a prisoner here."

The Nali in the corner ducked his head. His needle flashed in the firelight.

849 looked back and forth from one to the other. A line appeared between her eyebrows and before she could stop herself she had reached out and crushed her wrapped hands around the priest's wrist. He flinched but met her gaze.

"Tell me where she is."

The painted priest's eyes dropped. "_Apra et_."

849 jabbed the paper again. "Where?"

Gently extricating his arm from her grasp, he retrieved his pencil from the desk and, smoothing the paper out, began sketching something on the back. After a moment, he handed the paper back to the prisoner.

She looked at the drawing. _Pretty good for a thirty-second draft. _A rectangle rising from a rock in the water. The top was elegantly tapered to a point, supported by four pillars, and between the pillars was a bell.

In the distance, there was the mournful call of a clapper on cast metal.

The bell tower.

A relieved smile broke out on 849's face. "Thank goodness," she breathed, and beamed up at the Nali priest.

"Now can I have some more soup?" She put both hands on her stomach, the paper still clutched in her hands.

The first Nali refilled the bowl. Neither he nor his companion said a thing.

She couldn't ask them how long she had been there, but she figured she had recuperated for long enough. Two days after she first opened her eyes, she managed to tear off the bandages on her hands using her teeth while the two Nali priests who had saved her were out tending to their cattle in the small pasture beside the Monastery. When they returned to the small antechamber, 849 had already pulled on her pants and was mechanically lacing up her boots with trembling fingers. She had removed most of the bandages and even with the two angry red gashes marring the entire right side of her face, she smiled at them before she re-equipped herself and stepped out of their warm haven. They accepted her decision and gave her two pouches. One was filled with Nali fruit seeds, and the other held a roll of bandages and a smaller bag of herbal medicines. The second priest then presented her with a hand-stitched torso-length cloak that would cover her more than her Kevlar could and offer her a bit of warmth.

She was glad they didn't understand each other, or else she would have asked them to keep her. For a moment, she had been a human, and she had been safe. She had grown used to the pampering, but her survival instinct refused to let her settle down. She would lose her edge if she did.

_To go down is to be human. To go down is to die. _

And so she put her hands on the Nali's faces and kissed them goodbye, giving them the farewells that she was unable to give all those she couldn't save. They, in turn, wrapped their arms around her, and for a moment they all three of them were one. She breathed in the warm earthy scent of their skin, trying to burn the memory of their arms around her body into her consciousness.

She would never know their names, but just for that moment, they were hers.

The Monastery was empty save for the few Nali refugees that she had rescued. She saw that most of them were in the livestock pen, gathering straw for the cows and struggling with the rabbit hutch, but she slipped away before they could see her and stop her. The frigid air against her unbandaged skin woke up her senses and the Enforcer was a familiar weight at the end of her arm. The Nali had done a decent job with mending her pants but her being shirtless couldn't be helped. It was just as well. She didn't mind. And when she rounded the bluff and saw the marble bell tower jutting into the sky, she could have shouted with happiness. Clutching the keycard in her hand, she hurried down a path that wound down the side of the bluff until she was about fifteen feet above the water. She was so excited that she didn't bother waiting for the lift and instead leapt into the water, the shock of the icy liquid causing her to laugh as she broke the surface. "Kira!" she called as she kicked towards the sloping rock that the tower jutted from. "Can you hear me? You don't have to be afraid; I'm a friend!"

She pushed open the heavy door and dashed inside the bell tower. The chamber was dark and cold but 849 was too excited to care. Scrambling onto the platform in the middle of the room, she swiped the keycard down the lift's coding pad. The metal screeched under her feet and lurched a little, but finally began to rise.

She was filled with wan smiles and secrets. She didn't know what she'd say first. The Translator was broken anyway, but it wouldn't be so bad. Kira would surely recognize that the prisoner wasn't there to kill her. A small alarm chimed in the back of her consciousness, warning her to be careful around a stranger—_but this stranger is human!_ She didn't want to listen to the negative voice any more. _Besides, I am fully capable of protecting myself against a human. I've killed Skaarj. I've…._

"Kira!" she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Are you up there?"

She didn't like what she had just thought. _Against a human. _It was almost as if she didn't consider herself the same species as the person she was about to meet.

"I'll be able to act like a human around her, anyway," she said loudly. "Kira! Hello?"

No answer—but the wind was picking up. It would be hard to hear anyone over such high-pitched whistling. She slipped the lift key into place and stepped onto the car. As the platform closed in on its destination at the top of the tower she shouted again, ignoring the sinking feeling in her chest when she failed to get a response. _It's just the sensation of moving upwards, is all. _

_…But can't she hear the elevator moving? _

The lift shuddered to a halt, directly underneath a massive silver bell that hung like a specter in the shadows of the belfry. 849, her hands clenched under her chin like a shy child's, looked expectantly around the shadowed space. And froze.

"Oh," she said on a dry sob.

Slumped against one of the crumbling pillars was the body of a young woman, her dirty saffron hair falling over her half-open eyes. 849 approached her as reverently as though she were walking towards an altar in a church, kneeling down next to the body and putting one of her hands out to tilt the woman's head up. Just before skin made contact with skin, the prisoner's fingers flinched, and she exhaled sharply against the absolutely debilitating disappointment that clamped her lungs shut.

"You were supposed to be alive," she managed to hiss past the stinging in her throat.

An emaciated shred of hope in her heart was holding out for a breath, the flicker of an eyelid, the twitch of a muscle in the woman's jaw. _She could be sleeping. She didn't have a lift key and there were lots of stairs to climb to get here. _Even when the prisoner's eyes fell to the dark stain on the front of the woman's flight suit, the voice of optimism still persisted. _You were covered with blood, too. Try to wake her up. _

Knowing it was hopeless, but listening to that urge in her heart to try and prove her common sense wrong, 849 placed a hesitant hand on Kira's shoulder and shook gently. The Russian woman's head wagged back and forth, but she made no other movement. 849 shook her again, harder this time. Her heartbeat jumped a little when she realized there would be no sudden flood of life in the Nali's supposed warrior princess. Her touch would not bring Kira back.

Something like anger took over her body and she cursed, slamming the Enforcer down onto the floor; the metal clattered and spun off into the shadows.

"Fuck," she said brokenly.

There were two blood-smeared objects in Kira's lap. 849, wiping both on a clean scrap of Kira's flight suit, found that one was a translator and the other was the remains of a small journal. She read the translator message—at the words "hopefully the Skaarj won't find me here", 849 gave a small snort of disgust— and then turned her attention to the journal. The leather covering was still intact but every bit of paper on the inside had been ripped to shreds. Whatever secrets it had carried, it was keeping. Kira had made sure of that. 849 sighed and tossed it over the edge of the platform. Maybe it was for the best.

She leaned back and sat down in front of her dead companion; crossing her legs and putting her elbows on her knees, she laced her fingers together and rested her chin on top of her hands. There was a thick line of anger between her brows as she knit them together, trying to keep her breathing even. She dropped her head and looked down at her own body.

"You had everything going for you-," she said, "-and you died. You were handed the keys to freedom and you allowed yourself to be slaughtered. You holed yourself up in a fucking bell tower and were killed because you don't have any fucking common sense!"

Her head jerked up. "Do you have any idea how many Nali sacrificed their lives for you?! You were supposed to be their warrior princess and now you're dead! Who's going to pick up the pieces, now that you've dropped them everywhere?" She struggled to her feet, fists clenched. "Why can't any of you assholes give me a break?" She leaned over the bell tower railing, shouting to the monastery below. "Am I too late to save every single God forsaken son of a bitch on this rock?!"

The force of her voice hurtled down towards the stone structure; it took her a moment to realize that no one had heard her. Her plague had passed through the monastery. Every threat to her life had been extinguished by her hand.

Her hands fisted around the railing as her pounding heart slowed down. She knew it was unwise to expend energy on being angry. It was wiser to express her emotions in battle— it was usually how she came out on top when warring with creatures twice her size.

Her knees folded underneath her and she collapsed next to Kira, watching her breath puff out in clouds. After a moment her upper body folded over like a flower, and she ended up hugging Kira's stiff shoulders, her cheek buried in the hollow of the Russian woman's neck.

"I'm sorry." she breathed.

It was cold enough outside that Kira's body had begun to mummify in the freezing elements, but 849 closed her eyes and imagined that she was drawing warmth from the corpse. It was certainly better than entertaining thoughts of taking the woman's warm-looking flight suit.

"I didn't want to know your story, but I'll let you come with me, if you want." She was growing sleepy. "You'll have lots of company. I've made lots of acquaintances that you can talk to. There's Myscha, who saved me. And there's Ash, who didn't save me, but then he made up for it. There's a couple people that I don't know, but their faces come up every once in a while." Her eyelids fluttered. "I think that's them, sitting by that other pillar. They won't stay for long. They never do."

_You are wasting time. _The voice of reason was back. _You are not sleepy; you are experiencing the effects of hypothermia. Leave immediately. _

The prisoner sat up, obeying. Her mouth worked and she spat a mouthful of blood onto the marble floor. Looking at Kira, she pinched the woman's unseeing eyes shut and pressed a kiss to her icy forehead. "Ms. Argmanov, you are an idiot, and I am finished mourning for you."

She didn't bother searching the body for supplies; she could tell from a single glance that Kira didn't have so much as a fruit seed on her person. It took some time, but finally 849 was able to collect enough of her waning strength so she could drape the stiffened corpse over her shoulders and position herself on the edge of the platform. With a sudden surge of her body, she sent Kira vaulting over the railing and tumbling like a leaf towards the lake. Her body hit the water with the sound like a slap across the face. Facedown, she bobbed near the surface for a moment before the weight of the glacial lake began pulling her under.

849 watched quietly as Kira sank softly into oblivion, the golden ripples of her hair still visible and waving like wheat long after her body was lost to the gloom.

When the deed was done, she looked down at her hands. They felt strangely empty. Suddenly panicked, she stumbled onto her hands and knees, feeling around on the cold marble for her discarded Enforcer. Her fingers brushed against its muzzle and she breathed a shaky sigh of relief, scooping up the gun and clutching it to her chest, bending her head over it protectively.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She crooned, cradling the weapon and rising to her feet. "I won't do that ever again. Don't leave me. Don't fail me. I'm sorry."

She realized now that she was truly alone.

_All right, Na Pali, _she thought, inhaling deeply and turning towards the shipping cart that swung in the insistent mountain winds. _I'll be your warrior princess. I'll be that messiah you so desperately want. Apparently you won't accept anyone else. _

Activating the shipping car controls, she stepped onto it unsteadily, jerking a little when the car started moving away from the Bell Tower.

_Just live, _the voice coaxed sweetly. _Live. Just for a little longer. Just a little bit more. _

"I don't have a choice, do I?" 849 said loudly, irritably. "It seems like Hell won't take me just yet."

The slow, terrifying smile that curved her mouth failed to reach her eyes as she rested the heel of her palm against the handle of her Enforcer.

The shipping car carried her through a mine shaft opening in the side of the mountain. Without a second glance to the scene she had just left behind, Prisoner 849 disappeared into the shadows and was gone from the Bluff Eversmoking Monastery. She left no evidence of her passing through, save for the Skaarj and Krall bodies bleeding out in the hallowed hallways. The Nali that had been released from their prison cells wasted no time in dumping the bodies into the sewer system within the plateau.

The story of the Messiah's conquest at Bluff Eversmoking spread like wildfire through the Nali civilization. During the following weeks the Skaarj went into a near-panic, sending nearly half of their forces fleeing back to the Mothership to regroup and consult with their completely enraged Queen. Security was doubled in the last remaining Skaarj strongholds on the continent. Nali were oppressed more than ever, but now a renewed song of hope was in their hearts.

Even though the Messiah vanished from the light of day after the encounter at the Bluff, the Nali knew that it was only a matter of time. The Skaarj reign on Na Pali was unsteady. All it needed was the slightest push and it would crumble. So they waited. Patiently, they waited.

And 849 did not resurface for a very long time.


	16. Lucifer

I'm sure you can imagine how emotionally draining _Lux _is. It hurts, letting go of your characters.

Well, here we are, at the end. Thanks so much for following me this far.

Chapter Sixteen: Lucifer

Her memories followed her like ghosts as she came to a slow stop in front of the iris hatch. Eyes as empty as water, body as brittle as glass, she looked around at the gloom that encompassed the giant chamber. The grate that she was standing on was the only thing separating her from a seemingly bottomless drop; likewise the ceiling was swallowed in darkness, so that she had the feeling of being in a breathless, soundless vacuum, with the only solid matter being herself and the circular hatch that glowed eerily in front of her.

Her memories followed her like ghosts as she walked towards the hatch and watched the grinding metal open like a flower in her wake. She stepped through the doorway, her ragged cloak snapping in the sudden breeze, her lips pressing together as she swept her eyes from one side of the room to the other. The circular walls flickered with an olive tone that they borrowed from the iridescent emerald beam that erupted from a circular hole in the floor like an illuminated tree trunk; it sliced through the ceiling and seemingly went straight on through to the Mothership stationed above. A circular platform roped around the space above her head, supported by several columns. The air smelled like moss and ozone.

Her memories followed her like ghosts as she stopped a few steps away from the energy beam, her skin alight with the color of spring grass. The once vast arsenal she had wielded was reduced to a handful of weapons; a shock rifle was slung over her right shoulder while a regular rifle occupied her left. The knife of a long-dead Nali was tied to her thigh; other than these three arms, and the Enforcer that was ever in her hand, she was stripped bare of any defenses.

It had been nine months since Prisoner 849 had set out from Nyleve's Falls. It had been four months since she had encountered the strange woman at the Trench, and two months since she had seen Kira's body.

That had been her last encounter with Nali or humans alike.

More than half of a Terran year had gone by and 849 had weathered the time day by day, with her memories following her like ghosts. Often she heard their footsteps echoing hers. Often she would see them traveling just behind her, but they were never there when she turned around. Still, she didn't complain. Mirages or not, they gave her the impression of having company, and any company on Na Pali that was not hostile was welcome indeed.

She ate little and slept even less. She was still living but she didn't feel alive. She didn't feel much, any more.

But she had reached her destination. She had crossed through valleys and villages, fields and facilities, canyons and castles and everything in between, and finally, she had ended up…here.

She had spent hours fighting her way through the huge circular Mothership and now she was teetering on the verge of death or victory. She would welcome either one, but at this point, she was most likely facing the former. There were so many Skaarj here that she had been forced to retreat several times.

However, they had all failed in keeping her from her target.

And now there was no going back.

A small tremor shook the ground beneath her feet, followed by a burbling hiss and the scrape of talons on metal.

And the Queen of Death stepped into the light.

It was 849's habit to always scan her target first, pinpointing any sort of weak spot that she could aim for to bring her adversary down more efficiently. A preexisting wound, a gap between plates of armor, even a bruise on the skin would be enough to alert her of a space that she could direct her aim towards.

She saw nothing of the sort on the twenty foot tall form standing in front of her. No scars. No wounds. Just pure muscle clad with scales that rivaled diamonds in their strength.

The creature stood on its avian back legs, balanced by a tail and a pair of razor sharp secondary feelers that were nearly twice as tall as the prisoner. Sweeping up from its powerful haunches was a torso that was lined with swells of scaly flesh that looked suspiciously like mammary glands, but seeing as Skaarj were reptilian, 849 highly doubted that the glands provided any sort of nourishment for the Pupae the Queen produced. Everything about the Source screamed 'deadly', but for all of her fierceness, the creature merely shook herself slightly at the sight of 849 and leaned forwards to rest on her clawed hands, her haunches swaying high in the air as she brought her great head down to the prisoner's level. 849 met the luminous gaze evenly, keeping herself perfectly still as the Queen approached, her silky opal scales rippling in taut waves. Her eyes winked color, like the memory of stained glass; the prisoner could see her own reflection on their liquid surface as the Queen's head dropped towards her.

And so she stood, the solitary ambassador of Earth, the weight of knowing that every other person she had encountered had been lost to Na Pali settling heavy in her chest. That's all they were. Scars on her heart. Ghosts in her memory.

The two juggernauts of Na Pali stared each other down amidst the throbbing hum of the energy beam. Out of the corner of her eye 849 saw the flicker of a tall form crumpling to the ground— Myscha! —but she dared not turn her head away from the Queen. The image would go away— they always did.

Ghosts.

Memories.

Scars.

"You must know-" 849 said quietly, "-that I'm here to kill you." They were the first words that she had spoken aloud since she had left the Monastery.

The Queen's head tilted slightly to the side and she began to circle her prey. 849 could help but admire the flowing grace of her silent limbs and the way she seemed to blend in with the olive darkness. There was another flash, this time coming from underneath the Queen's massive body— it was the nameless girl this time, and then suddenly Ash was next to her, smiling— and 849 returned her eyes to the Queen's head. The words of a song her grandfather had sung, words whose meaning she had long forgotten, crept unbidden into her throat. She found herself whispering them and the sound of their song was like the scurrying of tiny paws.

"Hail holy queen enthroned above, oh Maria." Her words seemed to surprise the Skaarj matriarch; the great shimmering body danced backwards a step or two.

"Hail mother of mercy and of love, oh Maria. Triumph, all ye Cherubim. Sing with us, ye Seraphim." Her voice was ice, cold and cracked. "Heaven and earth resound the hymn."

The Queen hissed.

"Salve. Salve. Salve regina."

The Queen lunged forwards, talons outstretched. 849, with the uncanny speed of one who has been forced to live in a constant state of mortal danger, dove out of the way. She came out of her rather rough tumble with her Enforcer in her hand. She flinched when she saw a shadow come diving towards her from the darkness above.

_If it's not the Queen, don't worry about it. _

Again, the Queen made a swipe for the prisoner's body. If she had made contact, the Terran's body would've been broken to bits against the far wall. But again 849 evaded her, her clumsy poise pitiful even to her own senses. The Queen had her on the run, and they both knew it.

She heard Ash's laughter in her ears, followed by the sound of rushing water. One of the Queen's feelers came lancing down and scraped against 849's shoulder, ripping the skin all the way down to her wrist.

_And the Manta flew up and away to gain momentum for its next attack—_

Reflexively tightening the muscles in her injured arm, she glared up into her attacker's eyes. The look that the Source had on her inhuman face was almost gloating.

Suddenly it was very hard for her to breathe.

"You think…you've won?" she asked incredulously. "You think you can kill me that easily?"

Rearing up with a sharp cry, the Queen launched a barrage of electrical charges from the mammary gland-esque lumps on her torso. Several of them burnt into 849's skin, and her face twisted in pain.

"You must know that you've managed to kill me several times already. But I don't die as easily as your sons, do I?" She went down heavily on her knees, barely avoiding being decapitated. "If I think about it, I'd say it's a little unfair to send _hundreds _of Skaarj against one human." An electrical charge slammed into her chest, burning through her cloak and causing her heart to shudder.

Kira's body flickered on the ground at her feet, like a reflection of daylight. After a moment it was gone.

"But since I fucked up every one of the larvae and the parasitic scum you sent after me, I guess it worked out for humanity in the end." Clenching her hand around her Enforcer and pulling Myscha's knife out of its holster on her thigh, she mirrored the Queen's circular pace.

"I guess I just can't stay dead, can I, until I see you go before me. You've killed me so many times—"

The back of her boot knocked into something, and then a sharp pain filled her foot. Looking down, she saw a slimy green mass attached to her shoe. A Skaarj pupae. In one fluid motion, she knocked it away from her leg and then pinned the wriggling creature under her boot. Gathering her strength, she brought her entire weight down onto it, listening to the satisfying crunch of soft bones beneath her heel.

Enraged, the Queen swooped towards her but was stopped by a neatly aimed bullet to the temple. She shook her head and screamed, swiping at her eyes.

_You ran me through in the shadow of a waterfall._

_You gutted me and left me for dead._

_You used me as a shield when I was distracted by a friend._

_You trapped me in a bell tower._

"That I have nothing left to lose."

Her voice took on a steely chord and her entire body shivered like a drawn bowstring. The blank brown of her hooded eyes flashed with sudden wild wonder.

"I am all those whom you have slaughtered!" She screamed and her voice broke with misuse and the sudden wash of grief as she opened up to the memories of _all those people _who hadn't made it to where she had. "And you— you cannot kill me because I am already _dead_. I... _we_...are souls, and souls don't die! You can't kill me— you can't kill _us_!" She held her arms out crucifix-style, and instead of nails in her palms she held a Nali fishing knife and an ancient, bloodstained pistol. "Try to burst this body! Try to extinguish this light!"

Up came Myscha's knife. Up reared the indomitable force of a thousand different souls crying out for vengeance. Up came her grief-ragged, time-worn, heartsick cry of despair and anger against everything she had witnessed since she had first stepped out of her cell on the _Vortex Rikers_.

And when the Queen belled her challenge to the prisoner in front of her, 849 answered the call at a dead run.

* * *

The pounding stopped.

Twenty Nali hands were still pressed, trembling, against the door, but the wood was no longer rattling under their palms.

Those among the ragtag group of Harobed villagers who could not reach the wide wooden door that their fellow neighbors were steadying themselves against instead chose to brace their hands against the others' backs. A few women and children huddled near a fireplace situated between two bookshelves lining one of the walls, their faces illuminated with fear by the glowing coals.

Baran, his back aching from the blows and his fingers clutching the empty flak cannon, looked hesitantly up at Niori, who was bracing his entire upper body against the brass latch. If he had known, months before, that they'd be cornered one of the upper rooms of the Sunspire—so close, so _close _to the Skyelevator—he wouldn't have bothered trying to make contact with the Nali of Na Pali Haven. The siege had lasted for nearly a week and this was the last possible spot that the group could make their stand. He and Niori both knew that they were in the dwindling moments of their last stand—but….

"What are they doing?" he whispered hoarsely. Niori met his eyes and shrugged.

With the aid of the flak cannon and Baran's newfound leadership skills, the Harobed villagers had made it to the Sunspire only a few days after their intended arrival. That had been nearly four months ago. There were indeed Nali in the monument that were waiting for them, but as the months dragged by, visits from the Skaarj grew more and more frequent until the entire population had to actively start fighting off their adversaries. Baran had no idea what was going on in the outside world but, with the arrival of this latest group of Skaarj, he knew that something drastic had to have taken place. Normally only two Skaarj were sent to put down Nali resistance fighters, and there were five outside of the door, throwing themselves violently against the wood and tearing at it with talons and Razik blades alike. The last flak shell and long since been fired and there were no alternatives to their desperate situation. When the door caved in, they would all die.

But now…there was nothing.

Pressing his ear against the door, Baran struggled to listen for Skaarj movement above the pounding of his heart. There were dim shuffling movements outside and shadows moving between the crack of light under the door, but the assault had, for the moment, stopped.

"Do you think they'll leave now?" Diaba's voice was hopeful, but the idea was so ridiculous that Baran didn't bother to answer her. He instead put the empty flak cannon off to the side and crouched down on his hands and knees, bringing his face close to the floor. If he could manage to see what was the Skaarj were up to through that small opening, he'd be able to make a decision regarding their current situation.

A roar from the hallway shattered the nervous silence inside the room, and immediately the Nali's bodies seized up against the threshold, pressing even more firmly against the door. Baran was practically smashed against the doorframe until he managed to shove his way through the forest of limbs and stagger to his feet behind them.

"Not so much, not so much, you'll break through the door from _this _side if you keep that up," he said irritably. "Now stand back, I want to listen."

"They could be trying to trick us," one of the Nali said nervously. "At any moment they could rush the door when we're not ready for them."

"I said," Baran said, "stand _back._"

A low murmur breezed through the crowd, but the group of bodies parted to make way for Baran. He approached the door once more, placing his hands lightly on the wood and closing his eyes to focus his concentration.

Staggering footsteps. Short pants of breath. No growling. Never, in his experience with the Skaarj, had Baran known the Skaarj to be silent creatures.

"They're not communicating with each other anymore," he said. "I think there's something wrong."

"They're playing dead." Niori didn't sound convinced.

"No, no, they're walking around." Baran looked around at the villagers. Their eyes were wide in their pale faces. "I think something happened."

"The Messiah?"

Baran clenched his fist. _Happy…! _"Diaba. _Please, _no more foolishness. Did you hear any shots being fired? No. You didn't. The Messiah isn't here. _We _are our own messiahs now. We have to take what we've been given and make it work. Now," he turned his attention back towards the door, "I think I'm going to see what they're doing."

The Nali pressed forwards. "If you open that door you'll kill us all!" one of them cried.

"You're not sure of anything, Baran! Why are you so quick to act? This could all be a trap!"

"Baran." Niori's face was troubled. "Don't you think we should think this through? We don't know what happened out there. Skaarj are not so easily dissuaded."

"Niori, we can't stay in forever. We have no access to provisions or ammunition and the Skaarj are going to get in sooner or later, through the fireplace or the ventilation tunnels or some other opening that we don't know about. I say we take the chance now while they're exhausted. They've been at this for _hours_—"

"So have we."

"—and we cannot die holed up in this room like animals. They're acting strange now and there has to be a reason for it. You don't have to come with me. Open the door and throw me out. But all I'm asking is that we look to see if we can get out of this situation. It's our only option. Please, Niori."

Niori sighed heavily. "I'll go with you," he said finally. He turned to the others. "Everyone, line up at the back wall, in the shadows. Make sure you have a clear path to the door if something happens."

Reluctantly the villagers did as they were told. Baran put his hand on the handle, breathing in to steady himself. Feeling Niori's reassuring hand on his shoulder, he turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open.

A pair of Razik blades buried themselves in the crumbling stone next to his head. Baran froze, hearing the collective gasps of the villagers behind him. His heart surged into his throat and he felt Niori's hand tighten, but he didn't move.

Neither did the blades.

His eyes traveled slowly over the gleaming metal, following the sleek silver line to where it connected to the mottled scales of the Skaarj warrior's arm. The creature's hand was clenched into a fist, the black talon on its thumb looking just as sharp as the blades embedded in the wall. The arm was trembling slightly, but otherwise was still.

After a moment, Baran exhaled in semi-relief. The Skaarj would have pulled back for another assault by now. With adrenaline rampaging through his body, Baran pushed the door open slightly more, keeping his watchful tawny eyes on the line of the Skaarj's muscled arm as it swelled into his shoulder. Following the column of its throat, Baran allowed his gaze to fall on the Skaarj's face, on the deep-set, red-rimmed eyes that bored into Baran's with the ferocity of a physical blow.

Forcing himself to stand firm under the stare of his mortal enemy, Baran swung the door fully open. The warrior's entire body was buzzing with fury, but it did not move. It _could not _move. Behind him, four more Skaarj were in various prone positions on the floor. One of them had its hand braced against the wall, its fingers crawling slowly up the stone, trying to gain purchase, but that was the extent of its movement.

"What's wrong with them?"

Baran shook his head slowly, but whatever it was, he was thankful that it had stricken the entire group of Skaarj at once. It couldn't be exhaustion, but he couldn't waste time speculating. They had to take action now, while they had a sliver of a chance at survival.

He ducked under the Skaarj's arm, reflexively recoiling when one of his arms brushed against its scales. He padded softly past the other three warriors and stood in the middle of the hallway, looking down the corridor at the space ahead.

Nothing else seemed to be moving. The Sunspire was holding its breath.

And then, in the distance, a low rumble, barely perceptible to his ears. But it was there.

"Something's definitely happened. I'm going ahead to the sky elevator platform!" he shouted back to Niori. "See if you can gather any medical supplies or fresh Redfruit seeds and meet me there as quickly as you can!"

He broke into a run, not waiting for an answer. Rounding the nearest corner and throwing himself into a door, he burst into an upper chamber, where he dashed up a flight of stairs and stumbled onto a grassy patch of land at the peak of the Sunspire.

He knew enough about the Skaarj to know that they operated under the complete behest of their Queen. Their lives were their own but they could not function without the influence of their lifesource. That was what she was. Their Source.

Something had to have happened to the Skaarj's collective mother.

The night stretched velvet and smooth above him but the air was distorted by the waves of heat from the lake of lava nearly a mile below. He ascended the steps that led to the elevator platform and breathed a sigh of relief that the elevator car was still there. It would take a few trips, but he was certain that he could get all of the villagers to Na Pali Haven before their luck ran out. Once they were there, they'd be safe. He was sure of it.

The rumbling hadn't stopped, though. Baran crept to the edge of the platform and looked down, trying to see if there were any distant forms making their way into the Sunspire. But then again, the only thing that could make such a sound would have to be something the size of a Titan—maybe two, now that he thought of it.

It was only when he turned his quizzical gaze to the sky that he spotted the dimmest gleam of light above the mountains to the east. At first, he thought it was a star, but then he noticed it was moving, slowly, surely, doggedly upwards. The rumble was punctuated with sharp cracks of sound , reminding Baran of the sound that the sky chariots made as they tumbled through the air on their broken wings.

His heart full, Baran raised a hand to the light rising out of what Baran knew was the crater that the Skaarj mothership had settled in when it first landed decades ago. He watched the tiny glow until it punched a hole through the nighttime clouds, and, with a flash of fire, disappeared, leaving only a hairline trail of smoke in its wake.

_You missed it, Myscha, _he thought._ I think Na Pali's just been saved. _

_When we meet again, I'll have to tell you everything. _

_

* * *

  
_

_Prisoner 472 escaping._

She was dead.

_Prisoner 327 escaping._

Everything around her was dark and smooth and perfect.

She felt like she was floating.

So quiet. So free.

_Prisoner 849 escaping._

It was the most peaceful sensation she had ever experienced.

There was nothing to worry about, no one to talk to or protect. There were no bullets to fire or wounds to bandage. She had passed the threshold and she was finally, finally free.

The last thing she remembered was a mass of black opal bearing inexorably down onto her body. That was it, then. She hadn't won against the Queen but maybe that was what was supposed to happen. She wasn't upset about it. Relieved, was more like it.

Her hands felt so light. Almost as light as her heart. She didn't have to fight any longer.

She could just float here, forever, in the calm, bitter-smelling quiet of wherever _here _was.

Until her thigh brushed up against something solid and her silent inner celebration was strangled with sudden, terrible realization.

Opening her eyes, she watched as her quiet dark heaven transformed into the cramped, alien metal of a Skaarj escape pod. She didn't know how her body escaped the safety harness that she had strapped herself into when she had first entered the craft, but somehow she was floating like flotsam in zero gee.

She looked down at her body and managed a weak smile. There was no point in being frustrated about being alive. Her body looked like she had jumped into an industrial meat grinder. Her clothes were gone, her skin was charred in the places where she didn't sport massive gashes, and she felt like every bone in her body had been crushed to dust. She was not long for life.

"Thank goodness," she whispered when she realized that most of her injuries were fatal. "It hurts. It hurts so, so much."

A little while later, the back of her head bumped lightly against one of the small portholes lining the fuselage of the escape pod. With some difficulty she put her hands out and reoriented her body so she could look outside. She soon noticed another oddity. The craft wasn't moving. There was no push of engine power through the hull of the ship, no echoing roar of machinery at work. When she saw the lazy trajectory of the stars and the luminious glow of her personal hell directly below the window, she let out a small sound of disbelief.

Barely managing to break Na Pali's orbit, the ship had run out of fuel.

This was the farthest she was going to get.

She had sojourned all the way from one end of Na Pali's horizon to the other, and yet she had returned to the very same circumstances she had fled from.

Hands cupping the alien metal on either side of her head, knees bent under her body, 849 let the irony engulf her. She was back in the _Vortex Rikers_, after all, except now there were no cell mates or block guards to share her confinement.

She had been used to this, once. How foolish of her to assume that, just because the Rikers had crashed, her situation had changed at all. Her time on Na Pali and been a beautiful and dangerous interlude, but when all was said and done, she never had a way out. She was still Prisoner UMS 849, high-level 800, second-highest level prisoner on the _Rikers _and second in line for the electric chair on the prison moon.

_But now you don't have to worry about the prison moon, do you?_

That voice again.

It was her time on Na Pali. She was sure of it. It had changed her. Her conquest of the Skaarj had doomed her more than any of the injuries she had sustained thus far.

From where many had died…

"_I will live, Ash!"_

…she had escaped.

She started laughing quietly, and the sound was so lost and lonely in her ears that her eyes misted over. It was the first time she had cried since Myscha's death.

There was hope in her, growing like a cancer. It flared out, sparking and white-hot, igniting something inside of her heart that made her traitorous mind convince her reason that she _could live. _It sucked the energy out of her hopeless defeat with the warm promises of life, of escape, of true and wonderful freedom. It was making her sob. It was making her human.

She had survived a crash that killed many others.

She had thrived on a planet where others were slaughtered.

She had killed an alien who lorded over an entire empire.

"Hush," 849 said aloud in a voice that sounded like dried leaves rustling. She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand like a child, but the salt drops merely floated away from her face in wobbly, gleaming spheres. "Please, don't. Don't."

She had fought against and killed monsters two, three times her size.

She had seen such natural beauty as there never was on earth.

She had bathed in the silver shadow of twin waterfalls and grown whole—

"No more."

She had eaten with an alien and one of her sworn enemies from Earth and reveled in their friendship.

She had lived where others had died.

She had lived and _left _others to die.

She was alive and everyone else was dead.

And she was no better off now than where she had been months ago.

And yet hope fluttered in her ribcage like a hummingbird.

"I should be dead." 849 said firmly. "In a little while I will be. There is no reason to be proud of myself now."

Her words were hardly convincing.

_You will not die alone. UMS and Inuit will send retrieval vessels for their downed ships. They will find you. You will live._

"Maybe. For now, I will live. But just for now. If I am not found, I will die. If I am found—"

_You will live._

"—I will _not _live because I am Prisoner eight four fucking nine and I have a death sentence on my head."

_Little matter._

The voice was tiny and insistent.

"I have gone from one end of that world to the other and I am tired of running."

_You apparently seem to LIKE killing people!_

"I no longer have anyone that would stand up for my name, anyway."

_Watch what you say to the warrior princess._

"…But then again, I don't have a name to stand up for, do I."

The flame flickered on a doubt but held steady. When 849 raised her face to the window again, she carried all the light of a star falling from heaven in her eyes.

Far below, the eastern edge of the continent sleepily greeted the rising of its first sun. The dawn broke over hills and streams and sank its brilliance into yawning canyons, waking the world once more.

Perched atop the rusted fuselage of a weather-worn spacecraft, a cerulean-feathered bird spread its wings and launched itself into the air, joining its kin in their silent breathless dance above the falls of Nyleve.

Hovering wild and wingless above Na Pali, 849 curled her body around the shivering light of her hope, breathing it alive.

**(end)**

* * *

So that's where we leave her. If Luxie left you with even a fragment of nostalgia for the original _Unreal _game, then I've done my job. If it didn't, well, that's why I'm not a published author. :D

I originally had 849 singing Phil Collins lyrics ("Would you respect me if I didn't have this gun? 'Cuz without it, I don't get it, and that's why I carry one~"). I changed last minute because religion is a little more timeless than "Both Sides of the Story" and I wanted to have that last loophole in there where she actually remembers her name in a convoluted sort of way. She thinks she doesn't have a name to stand up for but she ends up singing about herself. So maybe that shows that she's gonna be okay after all.

I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out all the light imagery in _Lux_, but just in case, I will say that "Salus", the title of chapter thirteen, means 'salvation', and 'Lucifer' is 'light bearer'. Chapter fourteen gets its name from Creed's song.

Originally Norianna and Happy weren't going to be a part of the story, and I was only going to focus on Kira and 849. I'm glad I changed my mind because there are so many stories about Kira already and nobody's ever really written about the Dark Arena. 'Happyanna' scenes were definitely my favorites to write because they are my absolute favorite original characters I have ever created. I've got fanart of them, srsly. I bawled my eyes out while writing their deaths. I hope you enjoyed them while they were around.

There is a sequel to _Unreal, _so I might write a corresponding companion piece for Luxie. Fans didn't really like _Return to Na Pali _and the endings of both games were equally ambiguous, but if I think of a fun twist for a sequel, then I'll post it in the near future.

I think that wraps everything up. Thanks so much for reading. Every little bit helps. I'd like to send HUGE thank-you to Thug_4_Less. Not only did he consistently review _Lux, _but he was my faithful and brutal and wonderful beta-reader for the story from chapter six onward. Without him as my sounding-board, _Lux _would have been a badly written story, indeed.

Liandri Archives was my go-to source for all the hard facts in the story. I kind of bent some translator messages to do my bidding and the like, but any other mistakes I've made are mine and mine alone.

The only humans in this story that are actually mine are Happy and Norianna. I feel guilty about saying that I created Baran and the other citizens of Harobed because they are Nali and I certainly didn't come up with the idea for adorable four-armed aliens. :D Everyone, and everything, else is property of Epic and the creators of Unreal.

Thanks for all the love, guys, and thanks for reading and reviewing. There aren't many of you but I love you all very much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read and review and favorite _Lux. _I hope you enjoyed the journey.


	17. Extra Chapter: Before

So I found this while going through some notes that I had written before I wrote _Lux_. I thought I'd lost it. There's about three of these mini-chapters so I might just post all of them.

Anyway. This is just a quickie. More like a blurb. I didn't really edit it but meh.

Before

He met the Terran not long after departing Harobed.

He wasn't expecting to come across any living creatures in this, the most barren of Na Pali's grassland wildernesses, and by the look on the Terran's face, she was just as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

The travelling priest froze in his tracks, two of his hands clutching a walking staff and the other two balled into fists at his side. The road dust that had collected on his body blew off of him in gusts with every flap of his spun flaxwort cloak.

The Terran was standing on a hill not far from the path he was travelling, and she was all alone. When she caught sight of him she did not move, but held his gaze with her wideset eyes. She seemed to recognize him as a friendly entity, but she didn't make any move to approach him.

He raised one of his hands to her in greeting. After a moment, she raised one of hers as well. It was bandaged from her wrist to her fingertips, but it didn't seem to be paining her much.

The Nali approached her cautiously. She let him get one or two paces away from her before she took an uncertain step back. Even with the advantage of standing above him on the hill, he still towered over her. He stopped. She regarded him silently, the tangy smell of metal and mothballs wafting off of her skin.

"Hello," she said. He bent his head in greeting. The Nali knew some of the softskin's language, but he wasn't going to try to truly communicate with her. Too many words would be lost.

"I'm lost," she went on, looking over her shoulder uncertainly. The Nali found himself becoming fascinated by the way her short, curly hair caught the sunlight as it shifted in the gusting winds. "I was travelling with a couple people but we got separated by…by…." Her eyebrows furrowed. "…A monster."

She shuddered and turned quickly back to him. "You're a monster too, aren't you? Four arms and all. Although you're not at all like the other ones." She smiled. "And I've seen a couple other monsters like you and they've all been pretty nice. So you must be nice, too."

The wind was picking up. The Nali looked up, a little concerned. The puffy black clouds that had been whispering against the horizon that morning had danced towards the mainland quicker than he had expected, and were now billowing over the little hill that they stood on, casting massive shadows on the waving golden grasses. The Terran placed her bandaged hand on her chest; the blue material of her strange outfit rippled underneath her fingers. "My name is Mary," she said slowly. "Mar-ree. Say it like that."

The Nali dutifully repeated the pronunciation. It stuck in the back of his throat like sap, thick and sweet. The Terran snorted a quick laugh. "You make it sound like 'meh-ree' but that's okay. 'Merry' sounds like 'Mary' anyway. What's your name?"

Her hand pressed lightly against his chest and he couldn't help but puff with pride that he had actually been touched by a Terran. A member of the sacred race. Kin to the messiah.

He said his name slowly and carefully as she had done and waited until she had sampled it on her tongue, like tasting a new drink.

"Mee-sha. That's a good name. Easier to pronounce than some of my crewmembers' on the _Kran_." She looked at him searchingly. "You don't know if there's any way to get off of this planet, do you? Have you seen others like me?" She pointed to herself.

The Nali shook his head and shrugged. The wind smelled like sand and fog. The clouds were going to break any minute.

Mary pouted and turned away from him. "I should never have given Connectof my translator," she sighed. "I should never have been on that stupid ship to begin with. I should have stuck with art school. Or fast food delivery." Her head jerked up when the first fat droplets began hitting her skin, plastering her dark hair to her forehead. "And it's raining. Wonderful."

She looked so helpless and small that the Nali's heart gave a massive tug, and he decided to stay just a little longer at her side.

The priest shifted closer, and without really knowing what he was doing, took one edge of his loose cloak in his hand and stretched it over the Terran's head. She made a soft noise of surprise and looked up into his face. He stubbornly kept his eyes straight ahead and his face a mask of placidity.

_She is a member of the sacred race_, he firmly reminded himself. _She is small and helpless but she could be our savior so of course it is not indecent to stand this close to her and protect her from the rain. _

He heard her laugh softly, and she stepped closer to his body, the heat from her skin making his own flesh prickle with her warmth. Unconsciously, he dropped his arm around her shoulder. They both stiffened at the sudden contact of skin. It was too intimate, too strange, too…comfortable.

He was about to draw away when he felt the worn cotton sleeve of her flight suit wrap around his waist. Her arm was trembling and suddenly she was holding tightly onto him, burying her face in his ribs and locking his torso in a vice grip between her arms. He looked down in surprise.

"Thanks, Myscha." Her voice was muffled by his body and the sound of the rain. "I'm glad I met you."

The Nali's head was uncovered and the cold water was streaming into his eyes and mouth, but he couldn't remember the last time he had been so warm.

So they stood on the hillside, watching the hoary spray flutter down in misty waves, making the high grasses whisper and dance around their legs.

And together they waited for the storm to pass.

* * *

Points to whoever gets the reference to Mary's nickname. It's really convoluted.


	18. Extra Chapter: Closer

Oh lord. I regret killing Ash now. He's hilarious. He practically wrote _himself _in this sour little lemon.

Anyway, this was an alternate scene that I was gonna put in before the Brute attack at Nyleve, but I never got around to posting it. Here it is, my proof that I can write sex scenes _without _necrophilia and rape. :3

This is **pure smut**, but I'm not too worried about people wandering into the freakin' **M-rated** section of the freaking _Unreal Tournament_ archive. **Geddit? This chapter is M-rated even though the rest of **_**Lux **_**is not. **Hell, I might as well just bump Lux up to M anyway.

Also, I _hate _the word _penis_ when it is used in sex scenes. _Cock _is much more lyrical. _Dick _is kind of crude and _fiery rod of progenitive passion _is just silly.

Enjoy enjoy enjoy!

Title for this comes from Joshua Radin's song. Yes, it is sappy. Sue me.

Closer

"Are you offering to change that little detail?"

849 looked over her bony shoulder at the soaking-wet guard sitting in the shallows of the Nyleve River. She had started to worm her arms back into her sopping jumpsuit, but stopped just short of zipping the front up, so that her breasts pushed the gray-green fabric open and left dark wet spots on the front. She narrowed her eyes.

"Of course not," she said after a moment of consideration; even to her own ears, she barely sounded convincing. Ash knew it, too, and his brilliant white smile caused her hardened heart to flutter. He stood up from the rushing water and splashed towards her, his dark eyes boring into hers. He stopped inches away and crossed his arms over his chest; she had to drop her gaze to avoid staring at the way his wet uniform clung to his shoulders and chest.

"Say that again, and mean it," he said. The quirky grin was still plastered on his face; she wanted to knock the humor out of him. There was nothing funny about the situation; they were stranded on a planet infested with bloodthirsty Skaarj, barely getting enough food to avoid starvation, and every other human they had known was dead. _It just goes to show how strong sexual urges are_, 849 thought sourly. _We haven't eaten a full meal in a week and all I'm thinking about is getting some. Sex should be the last thing on my mind right now. It's not like I…need it. _It was true that she couldn't remember the last time she'd had sex. Certainly before she was imprisoned on the _Vortex Rikers_, which was, what, three years ago?

"You still haven't answered me." Ash brought up his hand and chucked her underneath her chin; she had to force herself to stop from flinching away at his touch. She wasn't used to this kind of tenderness; hell, she wasn't used to tenderness, period. Being a felon for more than half of one's life could do that to a girl.

"Of course...not," she said, appalled that her voice had dropped to a husky whisper. _Well, if he didn't know I wanted to, NOW he does. _"We'll disturb Myscha. We'll--what are you doing?"

Ash had slipped his rough hands into her jumpsuit and was pushing the wet fabric off of her shoulders. "You'll catch a cold in these wet clothes," he said solemnly, although she could see the light of laughter dancing in his eyes. "You bastard," she huffed, trying to slap his hands away and not succeeding. "Your clothes are wet, too!"

"_You_ haven't helped me take them off yet!" Ash complained, pursuing 849 as she finally escaped his questing fingers and backed away from him, trying in vain to pull the wet zipper up to her neck. "I'm going to catch pneumonia and die all because you won't have a little sex with me to warm me up!"

"Oh, you just want it to warm you up, huh?" 849 retorted, increasing her pace and holding her arms out to try to intercept Ash's hands. "In that case, why don't you go into the hut and ask Myscha to build up the fire for you? That'll dry your clothes, and I'm sure that'll be a lot quicker--aack!"

He had succeeding in getting his hands back into her jumpsuit, except this time, his hands dropped, and he had her right underneath the armpits. When she tried to jerk away, his fingers tightened, and she immediately squealed with laughter. "S-stop! I'm ticklish, you dickweed!"

_Great. Now he knows. _

The prison guard immediately took advantage of the situation and flexed his hands around the prisoner's sides and shoulder until 849 could no longer fight him off. She collapsed onto the ground, kicking her legs and gripping one of his arms with both of her hands, begging him to stop between gasps of mirth.

"I'm g-going to k-kill you," she managed to say when she was able to suck in a huge gulp of air. Her eyes were teary and her cheeks were flushed. Ash smiled and lifted his hands away, opting instead to kneel in front of her and take in the sight of a convicted murderer, laughing and blushing like a little girl. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands as the last few tickle-induced laughs were squeezed out of her lungs. "You want to take away every shred of dignity I have, don't you?" she asked him when she got her breath back, trying to be serious; the smile that curved her pink lips betrayed her. She pulled her legs closer into her body and crossed her arms.

"Maybe I just want to take away every shred of your clothing," he said saucily, his liquid amber eyes smoldering with something unnamed and dangerous.

_Go ahead, _her body said. _You don't know what tomorrow will bring. Have your fun now. _

She looked at him from under half-lowered lids. He was not a bad-looking man at all. Well-built and strong; a little taller than her, which was surprising considering her abnormal height, with a proud face and a striking gleam in his eyes. He had dark golden skin and capable, broad hands, hands that she wouldn't mind being touched by.

She didn't know if she was going to get off of Na Pali alive. She didn't know anything except here, now, there was the chance to forget everything that had happened in the past three years. With this wonderful diversion, she could just focus on being anywhere, _anywhere _but _here. _

"I don't know about you, but I'm all warmed up," Ash said lightheartedly, breaking her silence. 849 tilted her head.

"I don't know about you, but I'm still wet," she answered. Ash cut a strange glance at her.

"...Oh, are you?"

849 snorted and punched his arm. "My _clothes_."

The prison guard leaned his head towards her a fraction of an inch. "Mine are wet, too."

849 responded, keeping her eyes on his as their faces drew closer. "How can we fix this problem?"

Their lips were almost touching when Ash, with his signature quirkiness, quipped in a low voice, "We can always get Myscha to build a fire."

"If that's what you want." 849 lightly captured his lower lip between her own, trying to stifle her smile; the fire that ignited between them was enough to wipe any thought of Myscha and the hut out of both of their minds. Their mouths moved gently against each other for all of half a second before the kiss became heated, almost desperate, and suddenly his tongue was in her mouth and hers surged forth in earnest and they were making out like horny teenage lovers in a back alley on Earth somewhere, shamelessly sucking face and loving it, and 849 moaned against the feeling of absolute possession that swept over her. Whatever else happened between their frantic union, she would follow him. Anything to feel _this _again.

He pulled away from her long enough to gasp a quick breath.

"Let's fuck," he said.

_There _it was. She remembered this feeling even if had been forever since she had last felt it. That first poignant wave of arousal, the one that coiled quickly in the pit of her stomach and lower back for a bright burning moment, forcing her eyes closed as she felt heat pool in the space between her shivering thighs.

"Yeah," she said, suddenly shy.

His hands returned to the inside of her jumpsuit and he palmed her breasts, breaking their kiss and chuckling against her neck when he felt her nipples harden into painful peaks. "Cold, are you?" he asked before he began kissing down her jawline, making 849 arch her neck in a graceful line to give him better access to the softness there. He took the invitation eagerly, nipping gently over the lightning-fast pulse that flashed against her skin.

Lowering his face to the junction between her shoulder and her neck Ash closed his amber eyes and breathed in 849's scent, feeling suddenly possessive of this gentle bending reed of a woman in his arms. She was so different when she was horny and he loved it. He decided he would try to make her horny as often as possible from now on so that he'd never have to see that other side of her, that violent vindictive nature that made her more animal than woman. He kneaded her shoulders with his strong hands, reveling in the warmth of her skin. Her jumpsuit brushed against his knuckles. "Want me to take it off?" he asked in a low voice.

There was the sound of a zipper being pulled quickly down, and Ash opened his eyes to see 849 pulling her arms out of the sleeves of her outfit; the rest of it pooled at her ankles in a wet heap. Ash laughed but was silenced when 849 stepped away from it and pressed her body to his, grinding her groin into his thigh. He took a moment to look her over. Yes, she had filled out well over the last few weeks of good feeding. Her sharp shoulders and hips had rounded out; her breasts cast soft round shadows on her ribcage and the bowl of her thighs curved softly around the puffy mound of her sex.

Demanding his attention, she gripped the collar of his own uniform and pulled his face close to hers. Her eyelashes, wet with river water, clung together in feathery clumps, making the intense color of her brown irises all the more defined; right now they positively burned with want.

"Yes," she said, taking the zipper of his suit between her forefinger and thumb and flicking it upwards. "I want you to take it off."

"Mmm." Ash nuzzled her neck again and ground his body into hers, watching as her eyes widened as she felt the hard bulge of his dick nudging her hip. "I'm still a little cold over here, babe. Why don't you warm me up before stripping me naked and leaving me to the elements?"

He covered her hand with his and forced her hand to pull the zipper of his uniform all the way down. "Careful of the goods, now," he chuckled into her neck as the zipper passed his groin. His cock, released from its cotton confinement, jutted out from his body, brown marble flushed with purple. 849 took one look at it and the two words that came to her mind—_battering ram_—did nothing to calm her senses. It was not extraordinarily large, and she was not a virgin, but even she knew that years of celibacy—self-imposed or otherwise—could _not _help the fact that her vagina was probably not ready for what was about to happen.

"Suck me," Ash said directly into her ear, and the prisoner reflexively dropped to her knees at the husky need with which spoke he the order. Her hands wrung together and she looked up at him, gathering her courage.

"I thought Mexican guys were supposed to have big cocks," she scoffed, trying to hide her consternation and doing a very poor job of it. "Thank you so much for proving me wrong."

Unfazed, Ash jutted his pelvis forwards. "I'll have you know I am only half Mexican," he said triumphantly, "and we half-breeds are renowned for our 'one-size fits all' policy when it comes to matters of love."

His voice dropped comically low on the word _love _and 849, kneeling naked in front of him, couldn't help but laugh and was glad when some of the nervous energy seeped out of her body.

Ash reached down for her hand, and when she hesitantly gave it to him, he turned it palm-up and planted a reassuring kiss on the pads of her fingers. "No worries, 849," he said, guiding her hand to his cock, letting her get a gentle grasp of the shaft before he let go. "Just stop looking at it like you're hungry for sausage and you'll do great."

849 laughed again, partly because Ash was being ridiculous to soothe her nerves and partly because she was flabbergasted that she had a cock in her hand after practically _forever_. It was hard, but spongy and responsive to her touch. She gave it an experimental squeeze, wrenching a grunt from the prison guard.

Hesitantly, _hesitantly_, she brought her head close to it, and then, closing her eyes to try and make her heart's frantic beating slow down a bit, opened her full lips and took him into her mouth.

"Hel-lo." Ash was still trying to be funny but his voice was hung on a harsh exhalation. He watched with a hooded gaze as 849's tongue laved over him, circling the mushroom head before moving in a dripping trail down towards his sac.

"Oh," he sighed, placing his hands very gently on her head. "Good girl. _Good _girl."

_Do not gag, do not gag, do not gag. _The mantra was actually helping 849 push back her instinctive desire to throw up all over Ash's junk. She wasn't disgusted by it—far from it—but it had just been so long since she had had _anything _in her mouth that she was beginning to think she was in over her head.

Still, she tried her best. It helped that Ash was verbally encouraging her when he could actually _speak _through his harsh noises. After sucking softly at Ash's family jewels and noting with a flush of pride that she was making his knees shake, she moved her head up to take him fully into her mouth as she pumped him with her hand. Ash was whispering something over her head, his fingers cupping the sides of her head and sending delicious thrills of sensation down her spine as he ran them over her ears, and she could tell that he was having trouble resisting the urge to shove himself fully into her throat.

Coming up for air, she sucked the space on his dick where the shaft met the head, looking up at the prison guard in alarm when he nearly jumped back from her mouth.

"Did I bite you?" she asked with some concern.

Ash rubbed his hands over his eyes. "I'm just try'nna make this last more than five minutes is all." He smiled blearily at her, a predatory gaze in his eyes. "You're a good little cocksucker, Miss 849."

849 blinked and bit her lower lip to keep from crying out at the wave of heat that intensified between her legs. Good lord, _words _could make her come at this point. She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, watching curiously as Ash, after putting his broad hands on her hips, began tracing a hot trail of open mouth kisses down the front of her body. When his mouth reached her navel, he knelt in front of her, almost reverently, and his hands jerked her body forwards.

849, reveling in the feel of warm hands on her cold skin, unconsciously let Ash pull her pelvis forwards. Her arms were clenched close to her body and her trembling fingers knotted themselves in front of her lips. She could barely watch Ash perform his ministrations; every other breath she took, she became dizzy with the waves of lust building under the prison guard's…attentions.

"What if…what if Myscha sees?" she whispered. Ash looked up at her, rolling his eyes.

"So what?" he asked against her clit. "I'm just," he kissed the pink nub, clenching it between his lips, "making you," his tongue came out and soaked her throbbing lips with saliva, "feel better."

_The understatement of the century, _she thought hazily. His insistent sucking was going to make her topple over, whether he was supporting her ass or not. She squeezed her eyes shut, moaning low in her throat, as Ash's hand moved from her hip to stroke the steadily swelling flesh of her nether lips. After a moment, he slipped his middle finger into her soaking center, and one of her hands came down onto his head, nails nearly digging through to his skull.

"I guess you like that, huh?" Ash asked, his quirky voice laced with restraint. He rubbed his thumb over her clit as he gently, almost lovingly, pushed his center digit into her. She clamped around him, pulsing thickly, pulling him in deeper, and he gleefully gave her starving lips another kiss.

"Looks like you like being given the finger," he said huskily. Above him, 849 sobbed into her hands, knees buckling. "Watch it, you're gonna suck me up to the elbow if you're not careful."

He began loving her carefully with his mouth, his lips and tongue alternately sucking and stroking on her clit as his fingers worked deeply into her. He muttered unintelligible words into her crotch until 849 was shaking like a leaf on his hand and she hadn't even realized she had come all over him until he was standing in front of her and his sticky fingers were in her mouth so she could taste herself and he was somehow naked and pushing her down onto his discarded uniform while whispering sinfully delicious praise into her ear, oh good girl, oh sweet girl, now comes the hard part, and he chuckled at the word hard and all she could do was smile back.

She was on her back, and he loomed above her, golden and beautiful and covered with sweat that clung to his sleek muscles and made her trust in his strength and gentleness with every fiber of her being. Whispering sweet nothings into her cleavage, he lifted her leg against his ribs and slid into her and suddenly he wasn't whispering any more but growling, humping her prone body like an animal, and her hands clenched the dirt underneath her and she grit her teeth because dear _lord _that hurt like _hell._ She tried to think back to the pain that she had felt before, tried to tell herself that _this _was nothing, but suddenly she was angry because that was the whole _point _of this exercise—that she didn't _want _to feel the pain of before. _Before _hadn't happened in this fantasy of hers—it was only supposed to be sex and pleasure and no fucking pain allowed, not now, not in this slow sensual dream that blotted out reality.

"Time out, asshole," she hissed, squeezing down mercilessly on his cock. Ash looked up, his brows knotted.

"What's wrong?"

Her eyes filled with unwanted tears. "You're going too _fast_," she said helplessly, meekly, sheepish now in the face of Ash's genuine concern. She didn't want to disappoint him. "It…hurts."

Horror etched onto the prison guard's features and kissed her stomach by way of apology, moving his mouth up to hers again, his tongue moving slowly but insistently against hers. "I got a little carried away, there," he admitted. "Sorry. What can I do to make it feel better?"

849 squirmed, testing her walls. They twinged a little and she winced, reflexively closing one eye and baring her teeth. "Just...go slow at first. Okay?"

He did.

And it made all the difference in the world.

And she let him know it.

And Ash could've spilled his seed right then and there as her scrunched-up face--pouty but still pretty, he thought--relaxed into the face of a woman in absolute _bliss. _

He sat up in a kneeling position, holding her legs out of the way, and resumed his slow, deep, thudding piston into her sex, closing his eyes against the feeling of heaven, the feeling of home.

_This_, he thought, rational thought quickly abandoning him as fire flared in his loins upon hearing the first mewling sounds of pleasure from 849's throat. _This. _

He opened his eyes and looked at 849 writhing beneath him. Her leg was hooked over his shoulder, her arms raised over her head, chest heaving and eyes moist—fuck, he didn't think he'd seen anything more broken and beautiful. In any case, he wouldn't last long at all kept staring at her beautiful, beautiful eyes.

He pulled out and flipped her over unceremoniously, pushing her upper body into the ground with his hand while urging her hips upwards.

"You're making me present like a ham," she complained breathily.

"What can I say?" Ash chortled, repositioning himself at her weeping entrance. "I love bacon. Now spread 'em."

He took a moment to admire the way her nether lips practically running like a faucet for him, before pushing into her molten, welcoming warmth again, groaning through clenched teeth.

"Holy hell, babe," he hissed at her as she took every one of his thrusts to the hilt. "I don't think I can do this 'hold back for the inexperienced chick' thing anymore."

She muttered something into the ground.

"Can't hear you if you're talking to the dirt."

"I said," she managed to say between breathy pants, raising her head and looking back at him over her shoulder, her gaze from underneath her water-heavy eyelashes wicked as sin, "_break me_, you son of a fuck."

Ash burst out in laughter, even as his fingers tightened on the slim swell of her hips. "Then take it," he said, and his voice became almost feral in its timbre as he began pounding into her in earnest.

She was taking, oh, she was taking, and over the rhythmic hitch of breath in her throat she could hear him muttering over her, filthy dirty things that he used to shout at the convicts while patrolling in the _Vortex Rikers_ but the way he used those words now made her feel so fucking good and so fucking _free_ and she wanted to say his name but all that came out was a keening scream as he hit a sweet spot within her, dear holy _fuck _that felt good, and she tossed her head and clenched the small rocks under her hands so tightly they could have become diamonds in her palms.

"You crazy convict bitch," Ash hissed above her, in pleasure and half-anger, "you're going to alert all the baddies in this entire fucking canyon if you don't keep your mouth shut."

_The only way you're going to shut me up is if you gag me with your cock again. _She thought this was a particularly witty comeback, but could not give voice to it; one of Ash's hands had moved around to the front of her body and she could only whine towards her orgasm as he ran slick fingers over her swollen flesh.

"Fuck…fuck…fuck!" She pressed her sex into his palm in time to his rough thrusts, arching her back into his chest. She could feel sweat or river water from his hair drip onto her neck.

"Yeah," Ash grunted on a rough exhale, stilling his thrusting for a moment to readjust the angle of 849 hips against his. "That is the technical term for what we are engaging in."

"Stop being so snide," she whined, pressing back against him. "Why'd you stop?"

"Needy little girl, aren't you?" Ash gave her ass a hard slap with his free hand as he resumed pounding into her. "Stop whining and just _enjoy_ it."

_Oh, I am_. Her entire body writhed the meaning of her unspoken sentiment, and she cried out into the crook of her arm, her eyes squeezed shut, as she relearned the feelings that her body had long forgotten. Her entire focus was on the strength of Ash's hand on her hips, the gentleness of his warm fingers over her mound, and the absolutely brutal and beautiful way his cock filled her with each desperate, aching stroke.

"Shit," Ash whispered hoarsely, and his hand tightened against her hip hard enough to bruise the skin. "So fucking hot…."

_This_, her mind purred, _this this thisthisthisthisthis--!_

It was building inside her, a burning pressure that demanded release, and as bounced harder on his cock she realized that she was mumbling at her partner, pleading with him to make her come. She knew he heard her when he grabbed onto her and stilled her sporadic backwards thrusting, immobilizing her from the waist down.

"You'll come when I let you," he snarled above her. 849 turned her head over her shoulder, glaring up the sweep of her body and into Ash's triumphant face.

"You _motherfuck," _she accused in a voice that was clogged with lust. "I'll come when I want!"

Ash's face twisted into a half-grimace and then he gave her a knowing smirk. With more than a little horror, 849 realized he was pulling out of her.

"Don't you _dare!"_ she growled, trying to take him into her center again. His hands were still clenched around her waist, though, and she could only make little desperate lunges towards his glistening rod. "You can't do that!" she protested.

"Then ask me to let you come."

_You have got to be kidding me_. "Ash, this isn't funny." She felt her molten orgasm begin to slip away from her. "I'm not gonna—_ah!_"

Ash roughly slammed back into her, causing her body to lurch forwards on the ground. She braced for the pain but found that she was too wet for her inexperienced walls to complain at the intrusion.

"I said _ask_, Prisoner 849," Ash rasped at her. "Beg me to give your hot little cunt the release it wants."

That did it.

"Please," she said darkly, nearly rolling her eyes despite how his words made her body positively buzz. "Please fuck me, Ash. God, I need you to make me come so badly. Fuckin' give it to me you fuckin' _fuck—_"

Ash had started moving again, abandoning their previous tempo of hard and steady and opting instead for mindless desperate rutting that sent 849's mind completely out of its senses. Her entire essence was focused on the clenching fire in her core, on every stroke of Ash's cock that created fissures in the blissful pressure building there, and suddenly it was _right fucking there _and the coil snapped and the dam broke and she fucking _loved him _as she rode out her orgasm on a silent secret senseless scream that was louder in its absolute silence than any noise she could have ever made. Ash found his release seconds after, his rhythm holding out until he choked her name—her _real_ name, she noted absently—and then bent like a bow, roughly jerking at her hips a few times before collapsed against her back, rolling onto his side on the grass and pulling her against his sweat-shiny chest in one fluid, exhausted motion.

They lay there, panting together; 849 found herself matching her inhalations with his, and he chuckled when he felt her copying him. Supporting the side of his head on his arm, he ran a slightly trembling hand up her thigh and over the bony jut of her hip, finally resting it on the soft round curve of her stomach.

Together they watched the waterfalls across the river churn spirited silver spray into the air as they came down from their euphoria. 849 sighed against the disappointment in her heart. Yes, she had forgotten that they were _here_. The sex had been better than she had expected and was intensely disappointed that they had to face their hopeless situation again. She leaned her head back against Ash's chest. Their mingled sweat on her shoulders made her itch pleasantly.

"Fucking fuck, hmm?" Ash asked finally, his lips barely brushing the peach fuzz of her hair. "You are quite eloquent during sex."

"I couldn't think of anything bad enough to call you," 849 said, her eyes closed, lashes casting shadows on her flushed cheeks. "Denying a hard-up lady like that—you are definitely no gentleman."

"And you," he countered, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her temple, "are definitely no lady."

She snorted, then shuddered on a residual wave of unspent heat when Ash's fingers lazily traced up to her breasts.

"I do think you're pretty, you know." His voice was low and uncharacteristically sincere.

She turned to face him then, rolling on top of him, straddling his waist and sitting fully on his washboard stomach.

"And I think you're a dickweed who can't cook," she said, planting his hands on either side of his head and leaning down for another kiss.

Ash grinned jauntily and raised his head to meet her.

* * *

"--won't you be the new one burn to shine  
i take the blue ones every time  
walk me down your broken line  
all you have to do is cry."

Daaaaaaaaw. These two are so in love with each other. I would've exploited this fact if my hand hadn't been forced. Sorry, Ash!

Stuff nobody cares about: I actually had a little comic-thingy going about Ash's an 849's interactions on board the _Vortex Rikers _before the crash. It's not really canon, but meh. I had them flirting with each other, and at the end, he tells her that she has "Beautiful, beautiful eyes." So that was my stupid reasoning for repeating that description.


	19. Extra Chapter Final: Born During Rain

_If you have to take sides with the animals, won't you do it with one who is kind?_

Born During Rain

She accidentally killed a man less than two hours after the _ISV-Kran _fell, for no other reason other than the fact that she wanted his gun and he wouldn't give it to her. She had waited until his back was turned and then had wound up and thrown her translator at him like a professional baseball player pitching a fastball. The crack that his skull made when the metal pulverized the back of his head spooked her so much that she had forgotten to check and see if the gun had any bullets in it. It didn't.

But that didn't bother her, because Norianna Cleaver never thought ahead. She didn't worry about what might happen to her if she didn't have any way of defending herself on this strange planet, a land of beautiful scenery and a dark undercurrent of _something _that made her skin crawl when she looked at the sky or stared down into a quiet river valley. She didn't worry that she was alone for most of her journey, and that she was probably going to spend her last days on this strange world. She never worried. She was incapable of imagining anything beyond the here and now.

Many of her personality traits were unremarkable, and they didn't develop when she realized that she was stranded. Her drive to survive was quiet, almost careless. She walked for three days eating leaves from a plant, she didn't know what kind, and drinking water that tasted like metal, or blood, or both. And since she never thought ahead, she never worried about what lied ahead.

Her days came and went, and each passing moment proved to be lucky or unlucky for her. What happened to her didn't seem to faze her. After hiking for a week, trying to scale a mountain, she took a misstep on a steep slope one day and slid back down, some eighty feet, slicing her hand open on a jagged rock in the process. Standing on solid ground again, she stared at the slope for a while, sucking on her injured hand, before deciding that she didn't want to go that way after all. Her hand became infected after a while and it was only the medical administrations of a Nali priest that saved the limb from amputation.

She wasn't the perfect survivor, but she survived, unassuming and reckless on a planet where the slightest misstep could cost her her life.

If she had been like all the other Terrans wandering on Na Pali's surface, she would have panicked. If she had known what was lying in wait for her, she would have never stirred from the hull of her fallen ship. If she had been younger, she would have cared.

But the Norianna that she used to be had been gone for a long, long time, warped and changed by the ebb and flow of events in her life. Her younger self wouldn't have even known her now. She had lost sight of who she had wanted to be when she got older, and now that she was older, she had long forgotten what she was looking for. She was sure that she wouldn't recognize it even if she was staring straight at it.

And so she had given up on herself and was depending on her surrounding circumstances to define who she was. She figured that she existed, and that she was existing for a reason, and that she had to keep existing until something happened to her that affirmed why she was still _here_. And _here _did not matter. Here was anywhere she was, even if it happened to be an alien planet gripped in the midst of a terrible interstellar genocide.

On Earth, she was a wanderer, never settling in one place for long, a lonely face among millions without a friend to her name. On the _Kran_, she was a half-interested medical technician, drifting on the currents of social life on the ship. And here, she was a life. Just that. But she had always felt that way. It was easier that way, to just _be. _That's why she didn't look ahead. There was nothing ahead to look forward to. She did not thrive in rain so much as she was born into it.

She was captured on a chill rainy morning and brought to a circular building roughly the size of a football field. As soon as she saw the shivering, skull-faced woman staring at her from the floor of the slaughterhouse arena, she felt a weight lift off her shoulders. Something had to happen to her here, she decided. She had to make a difference _here. _A life can't drift forever and not matter. Perhaps it was here that she had always been destined to go. Her life on Earth had been a wreck, but here she could rise above the sum of her failures and make herself worthy of having a name, a face.

She saw herself on the floor, scared and alone, bearing the weight of tedious years upon years of dreamless drifting on her body. That was her, young and vulnerable and lost all at once, so much so that sometimes she wondered why she didn't just end it by her own hands. That was her.

Norianna carried this woman's physical scars on her spirit, and all she could do was laugh and pretend that she didn't feel the pain. She could at least nurture this poor life, cut short, with nowhere to look but straight into the grave.

Upon meeting her cellmate, Norianna allowed herself one brief glimpse ahead, and saw light.

* * *

I've been having a rough time. Life is funny that way. Very last chapter of Lux. Say goodbye.


End file.
